New School Politics

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Today is a good day to be a Romney supporter. Governor Romney gave what was without a doubt the most important and the most impressive speech by any candidate of the presidential campaign. With the national press listening, he spoke about not only his Mormon faith, but the role of religion and its importance in America.

I will not go into specifics of the speech because-well quite frankly I would not be able to say it as well as Governor Romney.

You can find the speech here on the Governor’s presidential website. It is also available on MSNBC’s homepage.

As for early reactions from the pundits, here are a few quotes from MSNBC’s post speech coverage.

Pat buchanan, “Beautiful, almost perfect.”

Chris Mathews, “After almost a year of this presidential campaign I have finally heard the most impressive speech in this race.”

Joe Scarborough, “A landmark speech on American religious identity, he did everything he had to and just hit it right out of the ballpark.”

Popularity: 37% [?]

For those who have heard of Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney, one of the first things they utter is, “Oh yea, isn’t that the Mormon guy?” Indeed, there was a major perception in the main stream media that Governor Romney would face serious obstacles in his quest for the Oval Office because of his religious beliefs. One of the reasons behind this is that polls show that more Americans’ would be willing to vote for a woman or an African-American than a Mormon. American’s should not vote for Hillary Clinton if she says that her gender will effect her decision making and policy, they should not support Obama if he claims that the color of his skin will alter his approach on issues, and they should not vote for Mitt Romney if he claims that the Church of Latter Day Saints will be driving his decision making. Yet, none of these candidates should be penalized for their personal characteristics as long as they will not influence their policies in the White House. If we do as Ryan proposes and analyze the faith of our candidates even more than we do now, then what is to stop us from lambasting public officials based on their race or gender?
Most people who are opposed to a Mormon politician claim that the religion is simply too odd or too strange, others’, such as Ryan observe the Church’s former policies of sexual and racial discrimination. It is true that blacks’ were not allowed to become members of the Mormon church until 1978 and it is also true that even today there is not a single woman that holds a high position within the LDS. Despite past policies of the Church, Ryan forgets to look at political history.

Michigan Governor George Romney, was one of first Governors in the country to support civil rights legislation. In 1962, Governor George Romney wrote the provision for the nation’s only constitutionally established Civil Rights Commission. There is no question that the Romney’s do believe in their faith and follow the teachings of their Church, but George Romney’s actions as a civil rights pioneer nearly two decades before his Church endorsed civil rights shows that true politicians put their oath of office above anything else. Like the majority of politicians in America, faith did not drive the policy’s of George Romney. Ryan was correct when he wrote, “the politics of Gov. Romney are not determined by the Mormonism of Mitt Romney,” yet he seemed to take this as an exception, when he should note that like Romney’s father, most American politicians limit the influence (if any) their faith will have during their tenure in office.

It is imperative that religion does not heavily influence the political actions of our leaders. At the same time dismissing those beliefs is not only unlikely, but unadvisable. Ryan may want to examine Romney’s faith to ensure it does not poison society, but what is to stop evangelicals from examining the Catholic faith Ryan was born with? It is apparent what a slippery slope this could become, if we as a society begin to dismiss politicians based on their faith even if it will not influence their policy, then we will endanger the very foundations of American politics. For example, could one not question an Objectivist on his ability to remove Ayn Rand’s philosophy from his thought process if ever elected into office? Politicians should be judged on the policies that they have proposed. American’s should not weigh a candidates religion unless that person admits that it is or will be a significant influence upon their policy. The only candidate who has done so as of yet in this Presidential race is Mike Huckabee. Unless Senator Obama, or Governor Romney, or Senator Clinton says that their race, religion, or gender will influence them in office, then it is only fair that we solely examine their political record’s.

Popularity: 44% [?]

I am currently reading Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone, a book written by the Baghdad bureau chief of the Washington Post that gives a striking account of the utter failures of the Bush appointed civilian leadership on the ground in Iraq. For those who do not have time to read the book, I just came accross this article from Matt Taibbi of Rollingstone.com that raises exposes (in a somewhat graphic manor) the failures of privatization of the warzone.

As I said before, the article is somewhat graphic in its language, but I recomend that anyone interested in the war read it.

Here is the link followed by the first few paragraphs from the article.

“How is it done? How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other wrapped around a chilled martini? Ask Earnest O. Robbins — he knows all about being a successful contractor in Iraq.

You start off as a well-connected bureaucrat: in this case, as an Air Force civil engineer, a post from which Robbins was responsible for overseeing 70,000 servicemen and contractors, with an annual budget of $8 billion. You serve with distinction for thirty-four years, becoming such a military all-star that the Air Force frequently sends you to the Hill to testify before Congress — until one day in the summer of 2003, when you retire to take a job as an executive for Parsons, a private construction company looking to do work in Iraq.

Now you can finally move out of your dull government housing on Bolling Air Force Base and get your wife that dream home you’ve been promising her all these years. The place on Park Street in Dunn Loring, Virginia, looks pretty good — four bedrooms, fireplace, garage, 2,900 square feet, a nice starter home in a high-end neighborhood full of spooks, think-tankers and ex-apparatchiks moved on to the nest-egg phase of their faceless careers. On October 20th, 2003, you close the deal for $775,000 and start living that private-sector good life…”

Popularity: 41% [?]

“By now you may have heard of the economic questions regarding using corn for ethanol production, but less attention has been paid to the environmental impact of using ethanol as an alternative to gasoline. Is ethanol more of a pollutant than gasoline? Surprisingly, the science says yes.”

Here is the link to the article

Popularity: 57% [?]

Richard Nixon is one of America’s most infamous presidents, people find it hard to forget Checkers, trade with China, Vietnam, and of course Watergate. Yet, not many recall that Richard Nixon was the first Republican candidate to successfully exploit the southern Christian vote. Nearly forty years after Nixon it seems that the powerful Southern and general Christian Conservative voting block is loosing strength in the Republican Party.

Southerners joined the Democratic Party after the civil war in order to oppose Lincoln’s new dominant Republican party. Yet, a dramatic shift occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. There are two key reasons why there was a dramatic demographic shift between the two parties; both of which were linked to a common cause. During the two decades of the Vietnam War and Civil Rights movement one group of people stood on the front of the protest lines; white, upper-middle class, college students. Yet the most important characteristic of these people of change was their political denomination, they were self-declared liberal democrats. While non college educated southerners fought in Vietnam, northern white college students protested the war, demeaned the soldiers, and then told the citizens of the south that they had to change their ways and let the black man have equal rights.

Of course I am not suggesting that only southerners fought in the war, and I know many men who went to northern colleges and patriotically volunteered for the war as officers. In addition, we should be blessed at the steadfast nature of those college kids who fought intolerance and violence in places like Montgomery so that people they did not even know could have access to the rights they deserved. What I am trying to convey is that white liberals were opposing the fundamentals of the lives of many southerners during the 60s and 70s. It would not be possible for these two ideologies to coexist in one party, and Nixon exploited those fundamental differences.

As Kevin Phillips, Nixon’s Republican strategist put it, “The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.” While Phillips did not create this southern strategy, it was not until his work for Nixon that the Republicans began to carry the south. After forty years of Republican dominance in the South, is it possible that the 2008 election will mark the beginning of the end of the Southern and overall Christian Vote?

The Southern vote has been a bastion of Republican support for years, and along with the southern vote came the massive nationwide voter block of Christian conservatives. They rally to cries of the right to life and outlawing Gay marriage, and while presidents from Reagan to Bush have relied on this voter block for support, it is becoming apparent that they are beginning to loose faith in the people they have elected. Perhaps they are beginning to realize that the Bush clan and other political elites use them to garner votes and do not actually share their values, perhaps they are just tired of spending time in caucus; whatever the reason, the traditional base of the Republican party is decreasing in size and reliability.

Will this decade mark the first major shift in voting demographics for the last forty years?

More than nine thousand people voted for president George W. Bush in the Iowa straw poll in 2000, yet seven years later the first, second, and third place candidates had barely ten thousand votes between them.

Every true Democrats’ piñata, Karl Rove recently retired from the Bush administration to spend “more time with his family.” Yet, despite Rove’s brilliant utilization of the Christian vote to keep Bush in office, his boss may cause a major backlash from the base as he failed to follow through on many of his promises. The Christian conservative and southern base is furious at their former poster child. The man they once all wanted to have a beer with is now the man they feel stole a beer from them.

Bush failed to stop illegal immigration which his Evangelical and southern (different groups) base both thought he would do, he did not keep “liberal” states from legalizing gay marriage or adopting civil union laws, and he failed to change the status quo regarding Rowe v. Wade. To add insult to injury, many of the sons, husbands, and fathers from these two voter blocks are fighting an unpopular war and spending longer tours away from their families.

Many of these once diehard Republican voters are now asking themselves an important question, “why should we keep voting for members of this party if they are never going to serve our interests?”

While some of the new Republican candidates seem to represent the middle classes’, “traditional” values voters on certain issues, they falter at others. Rudy Giuliani appeals to their patriotic instinct, yet he like Mitt Romney has been ousted for his liberal stances on abortion, gay marriage, and gun control. To make matters worse, Giuliani has been torn apart recently regarding the level of illegal immigration he permitted in New York City while he was mayor. Even John McCain, once thought to be the Messiah of the conservative movement betrayed his base by co-authoring an atrocious illegal immigration bill.

While many on the right are hoping that Hillary receives the Democratic nomination in the hope that it will energize the base, I have to raise the question, will they care? I believe that 2008 could indeed turn out to be a year of unprecedented voter apathy from the “family values” voters of the Republican Party. Many of them may be asking themselves what the Republican nominee can offer them over the Democratic challenger. More importantly, perhaps many of the people in this demographic feel that none of the candidates in 2008 will serve their interests once elected.

They raise a valid question, because even I am starting to wonder what the differences between the parties’ front-runners are.

Popularity: 76% [?]

This was an interesting article from the NewYork observer. In a strange way, it appears that it is not Rudy’s past social choices that are stirring up resentment among conservatives, but it is his past policy choices on immigration. Remember, John McCain’s campaign was shattered on the imigration issue after a massive backlash by his longtime supporters for his attempt to pass his awful immigration bill.

Here is an exerpt with a link.

After months of watching him wriggle out of tight spots on issues like abortion and gun control, opponents of the front-running former mayor say that his reversal on immigration policy has finally brought down the mayor’s impenetrable defenses and opened him up to attacks on everything from the consistency of his record, to his personal life, to the veracity of his remarks about Ground Zero.

Popularity: 40% [?]

I read this fantastic article by Governor Romney a few weeks ago and while I am sure that many of you have already seen it, I thought it still merited a post. The article covers many of the different aspects of foreign policy, and while it is brief, it does an excellent job of outlining where the former governor stands on the issues. In fact, I believe this is the best foreign policy outline released by any politician running for office in this election.

The article starts out with a lot of the usual Washington politics need change lines that the candidates love to throw around these days, but the subsequent pages are quite substantial.

Here is a link along with an excerpt-

WASHINGTON DIVIDED

Less than six years after 9/11, Washington is as divided and conflicted over foreign policy as it has been at any point in the last 50 years. Senator Arthur Vandenberg once famously declared that “politics stops at the water’s edge”; today, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee declares that our major political parties should carry out two separate foreign policies. The Senate unanimously confirmed General David Petraeus, who pledged to implement a new strategy, as the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. Yet just weeks later, the Senate began crafting legislation specifically designed to stop that new strategy. More broadly, lines have been drawn between those labeled “realists” and those labeled “neoconservatives.” Yet these terms mean little when even the most committed neoconservative recognizes that any successful policy must be grounded in reality and even the most hardened realist admits that much of the United States’ power and influence stems from its values and ideals.

In the midst of these divisions, the American people — and many others around the world — have increasing doubts about the United States’ direction and role in the world. Indeed, it seems that concern about Washington’s divisiveness and capability to meet today’s challenges is the one thing that unites us all. We need new thinking on foreign policy and an overarching strategy that can unite the United States and its allies — not around a particular political camp or foreign policy school but around a shared understanding of how to meet a new generation of challenges.

Popularity: 40% [?]

Today President George W. Bush linked the war in Iraq to the fight against Al-Qaida. While he has done this many times before, it was one of his most controversial speeches as he “lashed out at critics who say that al-Qaida’s operation in Iraq is distinct from terrorists who attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.”

I would briefly like to give our president a foreign policy lesson.

Al-Qaida in Iraq is a separate organization that Al-Qaida; it was formed by now infamous terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi under the name Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad. Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad was created in Afghanistan by Al-Zarqawi after the retreat of the end of the war with the Soviet Union. He ran a terrorist training camp that had no correlation to Al-Qaida or Osama Bin Laden and was operating with the intent of overthrowing the Jordanian government (Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is a Jordanian who resents the Jordanian Kingdom for not following strict Sharia law).

He left Afghanistan prior to the US invasion and traveled to Iraq where he was famously treated at an Iraqi medical facility. However, this occurred prior to the invasion and he still had no tie to the terrorist organization, which attacked American on September 11th. While he was in Iraq he established ties with a radical Kurdish militant group and also manifested contacts with senior Iraqi intelligence and military officials. It was not until nearly a full year after the invasion (in 2004) that al-Zarqawi announced his coalition with Al-Qaida. Zarqawi allied himself with Al-Qaida with the belief that it would legitimize his guerrilla movement to the rest of the Muslim world and increase his recruitment of foreign fighters. In 2004 al-Zarqawi renamed his organization Al-Qaida in Iraq, note that Al-Qaida in Iraq is a different entity than Al-Qaida with its own separate command structure and military imperatives.

It is true that there is an organization called Al-Qaida in Iraq, but it was not until after the US invasion (a full year after) that there was a correlation between the radical Sunni groups which killed over three thousand Americans in 2001 and the group which is responsible for many of the roadside bombs and beheadings in Iraq.

Today both groups share similar broad goals, however prior to US intervention in Iraq the groups had separate ideologies and goals and were only united in a case of the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

It is true that there is now a connection between the people who attacked us on our own soil and those we are now fighting in Iraq, but to say that Al-Qaida and Osama Bin Laden are leading operations in Iraq on a day-to-day basis is plane wrong.

Popularity: 41% [?]

Foreign Policy magazine has a terrific article on the state of affairs in Iran:

“Iran’s radical president is sinking fast, and he knows it. Now, there’s only one man who can keep Mahmoud Ahmadinejad out of the unemployment line: George W. Bush.In Tehran, the mood is quickly shifting. And it’s easy to feel it every time you stop to buy a newspaper, have a coffee, or wait in line at the grocery store. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s star is fading fast.Since his election in June 2005, Iranians have had conflicted feelings about their president. At first, he evoked interest and curiosity. And there were great expectations from this humble man who was promising economic reform, an anticorruption campaign, and a rigid moral scheme for daily life. Then came fear—when Ahmadinejad began to destroy any chance of good relations with the outside world.But today in Iran, laughter is supplanting fear. Mocking the president has become a pastime not only for rebellious university students, but also members of the establishment and the government itself.”

continued…

Popularity: 41% [?]

1. Initiate a National Service
2. A single State Solution between Palestine and Israel
3. Ensuring an end to energy dependence in the Middle East
4. Increasing abilities of non-governmental organizations, and US government organizations to provide immediate and effective disaster relief around the world that promotes pro-American imagery.
5. Outlawing Shari Law in the United States
6. Forming a joint anti-terrorism act with China, Russia, Japan, and the EU to ensure a task force greater than Interpol with no objective but to prevent global terrorism and also to create a multinational counter-terrorism task force capable of responding to nuclear, biological, chemical, and hostage crisis’s in every corner of the globe within 24 hours.
7. Providing cold-war level funding to form and operate pro-American television, Internet, and print sources outside of the United States.
8. Using covert military action and government sponsored economic means to open up rogue terrorist states to capitalism and western values.
9. Securing major American sea and airports to scan one hundred percent of cargo, also ensuring that the southern boarder of the United States is secure.
10. Rebuilding the national intelligence, enforcement, and emergency response community from the ground up to increase response time, preparedness, and capabilities, while balancing cost.

In the coming days I will create an in dept explanation of how to accomplish the steps I have outlined.

Popularity: 92% [?]