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Remember, Remember the 5th of November: David M. Weinberg, Israel Hayom, Oct. 31, 2014— Next week, on the fifth of November, the day after U.S. midterm congressional elections, U.S. President Barack Obama will begin the final two years of his presidency.
Democrats Crash-Land the Planet: Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal, Oct. 29, 2014 — Want to know how to really scare a Democratic candidate for Congress on Halloween? Forget the Sarah Palin mask.
A Referendum on Competence : Charles Krauthammer, National Review, Oct. 30, 2014 — Is this election really about nothing? Democrats might like to think so, but it’s not.
How Obama Lost America: Ross Douthat, New York Times, Nov. 1, 2014 — The 2014 midterms have featured many variables and one constant.
The Stakes on Tuesday: George Will, National Review, Nov. 1, 2014
Why the GOP Needs a Stampede in the Midterms: John Podhoretz, New York Post, Nov. 2, 2014
Obama Always Pointing the Finger of Blame at Someone Else: Michael Goodwin, New York Post, Nov. 2, 2014
Islamist Campaign Donors Overwhelmingly Back Democrats: David J. Rusin, PJ Media, Oct. 31, 2014
REMEMBER, REMEMBER THE 5TH OF NOVEMBER
David M. Weinberg
Israel Hayom, Oct. 31, 2014
Next week, on the fifth of November, the day after U.S. midterm congressional elections, U.S. President Barack Obama will begin the final two years of his presidency. He will be free to pursue his true ideological convictions in the fields of foreign and security policy; free to cement a complete reorientation of U.S. policy in the Middle East and beyond. Israel is likely to be a prime victim of Obama's last-stand aggressive foreign policies. While this may come as no surprise to anybody who has been paying attention, the ferocity of Obama's upcoming punch is still going to knock the wind out of leaders on both sides of the Atlantic.
The perfect storm in U.S.-Israel relations has been brewing for six years. From day one of his presidency, Obama has sought to put distance between Washington and Jerusalem (what the president called "useful daylight") along with a concomitant American rapprochement with Tehran. Give the man credit: Obama has been clear from the beginning as to his strategic perspective and how that perspective is radicallydifferent from previous administrations. Obama's rapid embrace earlier this year of the Hamas-Fatah unity government, and his failure this summer to fully support Israel against Hamas during Operation Protective Edge, were turning points in U.S.-Israel relations, and they portend much worse things to come.
Israel is going to face a series of Palestinian resolutions at the U.N. and in international courts this winter, seeking to condemn and penalize the Jewish state. Internationalizing the conflict and criminalizing Israel was always the central Palestinian strategy. Alas, Obama feels that he will be "unable to manage" or mount a defense of Israel. Obama clarified that this was his direction in a candid interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic in March. Blindsiding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he was flying to Washington, Obama warned that Israel can "expect" to face international isolation and possible sanctions from countries and companies across the world if it fails to endorse a framework agreement with the Palestinians and continues settlement building.
"If Palestinians come to believe that the possibility of a contiguous sovereign Palestinian state is no longer within reach, then our ability to manage the international fallout is going to be limited," Obama said. "There comes a point where you can't manage this anymore, and then you start having to make very difficult choices. The condemnation of the international community can translate into a lack of cooperation when it comes to key security interests," he warned. Little anguish could be detected in Obama's words, because truthfully, he wasn't too upset about Israel's "impending" isolation or the fact that America will "have reduced influence in issues that are of interest to Israel." Just the opposite; Obama was merely feigning dismay at the possible isolation of Israel, while in practice paving the way towards a global distancing from Israel. The give-away was Obama's total failure, in that interview and in his subsequent acceptance of the Hamas-Fatah government, to place any onus of responsibility on Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas for advancement or retardation of the peace process. There was not and is not a smidgen of answerability that he attaches to Abbas or to Hamas. Only to Netanyahu. Washington never insisted that the Palestinian unity government meet the Quartet principles involving, among other things, recognition of Israel and acceptance of past agreements.
Then this week, an unnamed Obama administration official (possibly Obama himself) confirmed to the always-available-for-Netanyahu-bashing Goldberg that after the midterm congressional elections, the Obama administration will no longer shield Israel in international institutions. On the contrary, Goldberg was led to understand that Washington itself is likely to sandbag Israel with a Security Council resolution condemning Israel over settlements and building in Jerusalem. To my mind, we are not far from the day when the Obama administration will support a Palestinian Authority resolution demanding a timetable for Israeli withdrawals to specific borders and endorsing punitive measures unless Israel complies. I don't think this far-fetched at all. So you see, Abbas can brutally mock American peace proposals, accuse Israel of "genocide," glorify terrorism against Israel, cuddle with Hamas and cozy up to Iranian officials in preparation for battle against Israel. Yet Obama remains mum about Abbas, while his "officials" call Netanyahu "chickenshit." Abbas says he will "never" recognize Israel as the national state of the Jewish People, "never" forgo the so-called right of return to Israel of Palestinian refugees, "never" accept Israeli security control of Jordan Valley and other key air and ground security assets, "never" allow Jews to live in Judea, "never" accept Israeli sovereignty in any part of Old Jerusalem, and calls for riots to prevent Jews from "desecrating" the Temple Mount by visiting there. Yet Obama issues no warnings of PA diplomatic isolation or economic collapse if Abbas doesn't compromise and advance the peace process. He pins nothing on the defiant Palestinian Authority and its radical Islamic allies. He is mum on all this, while his "officials" call Netanyahu a "coward."
But of course, Obama truly "wishes" he had the "influence" to arrest the isolation of Israel. Yeah, sure. Obama is purposefully engineering the denouement of the special relationship between America and Israel; just as he is purposefully overseeing the decline of America on the world stage. The thick layer of invective aimed at Netanyahu is just cover for this agenda. It is snide camouflage for six years of administration failures in regional and global diplomacy. Over the past year, Obama has granted Russian President Vladimir Putin gargantuan international victories, given Syrian President Bashar Assad a new lease on life, relegitimized Iran and re-energized the morally bankrupt U.N. — while playing Hamlet about his own authority to strike Syria or defend Israel. He has made only a ridiculously miniscule effort at confronting the Islamic State group. He leaves America's reputation in the world "unbelievably small." Don't assume that this emasculation bothers Obama, or that he thinks that it is the result of any failing. It is exactly where Obama is leading America, brilliantly so from his perspective — on principle and on plan. He very clearly believes that the humbling of America will bring healing to the world; that he will be leaving the world a better place by cutting America down to size, and allowing other "legitimate" actors, such as Iran, to assert their rights. And thus a soft U.S.-Iranian nuclear deal is coming soon too, which apparently will allow the Iranians to maintain a full nuclear fuel cycle. This is a violation of every American commitment to Israel and every U.N. resolution that demanded the dismantling of the Iranian nuclear effort. But Obama doesn't care. He is going to do an end-run around the Republican-dominated Congress, and cut a deal that will delay the problem beyond his term as president, while essentially guaranteeing Tehran the additional time it needs to complete all components of a nuclear weapons arsenal. Obama administration officials are already downplaying Iran's destabilizing role in the Middle East and saying that U.S.-Iranian relations have moved into "an effective state of detente."…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
DEMOCRATS CRASH-LAND THE PLANET
Daniel Henninger
Wall Street Journal, Oct. 29, 2014
Want to know how to really scare a Democratic candidate for Congress on Halloween? Forget the Sarah Palin mask. Don’t say “Boo!” Just slip up behind them and whisper, “national security.” They’ll jump from here into next week’s election. In New Hampshire, North Carolina, Arkansas, Iowa and Colorado, Republican challengers are spooking Democratic Senate campaigns by yelling, “Islamic State” and “Ebola.”
A Scott Brown ad in New Hampshire says Democratic incumbent Jeanne Shaheen “supports Obama ’s failed foreign policy.” Tom Cotton ’s ad in Arkansas says President Obama “underestimated” the threat in the Middle East. In their Colorado debate, Republican Cory Gardner asked Sen. Mark Udall “where were you” while Islamic State became a “growing threat?” Most horrifying of all, Thom Tillis accused North Carolina Democrat Sen. Kay Hagan of skipping an Armed Services Committee hearing to . . . raise money.
Democratic campaigns built around the war on women or the future of outdoor temperatures are looking limp. If I were a Democrat getting beaten up by Republican appeals to national security, it would madden me that earlier this year most GOP politicians were content to minimize the world’s troubles, citing—well, hiding behind—opinion polls purporting that most Americans were “fatigued” with the U.S. role in the world.
“Fatigue” became the default argument for ending discussion in conservative and GOP circles about offering an alternative to Barack Obama’s hook-and-slice foreign policy toward Syria, Iran, Iraq, Vladimir Putin ’s spreading empire, China intimidations of its neighbors or any other metastasizing global threat.
All of a sudden, Republicans everywhere are using a dented globe to pummel Democrats. Politics can be so unfair. Privately, Democrats complain that their candidates are getting tagged for Barack Obama’s incompetence. Mark Udall didn’t have access to intelligence reports about Islamic State’s spread through the Middle East. Why blame Kay Hagan for letting the Ukrainians twist in the wind? What’s Arkansas got to do with any of this? These Democrats are whistling past the graveyard if they think they can deny shared responsibility for the world on Barack Obama’s watch. The Obama worldview is their worldview—not because he happens to be president but because his is the foreign policy espoused by the Democratic Party’s leaders for a generation. One is vice president. Another is secretary of state.
After the Vietnam War, Democrats came to be known as the antiwar party. The real meaning of that phrase is misunderstood. Democrats moved away from the muscular foreign-policy tradition of Roosevelt and Trumanonly partly for reasons of aversion to overseas military deployments. What they really wanted to redeploy, permanently, was the federal budget’s spending accounts: Siphon money out of the defense budget and reflow it into domestic spending. Forever. Liberals loathed Ronald Reagan above all else because he took defense spending up to 6% of GDP. That it was 9% under John F. Kennedy has been swept under the rug of Party history. By notable contrast, Bill Clinton is revered by post-Kennedy Democrats because he reduced defense outlays eight straight years, ending at 3% of GDP. Under the Bush 9/11 presidency, defense rose above 4%. President Obama’s defense-spending plans would reduce it to 2.3% of GDP by 2024. The bucolic view of this is that Democrats merely want to help people by spending money on unmet domestic needs. The cynical view would be that once an inexorably northern liberal Democratic Party lost the South, defense spending did nothing for them politically. Domestic spending underwrites their bases of power and incumbencies in the North.
That cynical spending calculation holds for some Republicans in Congress. The difference is that only Democrats stay away from the world as a matter of ideology, for fear any commitment legitimizes dollars for defense. But bargain-basement foreign policy is high risk, especially if you’re standing for election in front of the famous fan. As now. If the Republican Party wins Senate control next Tuesday, it will be the dog that caught the bus. Then what? My guess is that much of the campaign’s national-security bravado will recede. Most Republicans will re-convince themselves that opinion-poll “fatigue” is real. Like the Obama foreign policy, that thought is delusional. Ebola is the wake-up call. Ebola was a problem over there, and addressing it could wait. Now it’s here. Ebola shrank the world. That is a reality from which it’s impossible to hide anymore. You can’t watch individuals infected with Ebola show up in Texas and New York from West Africa and demand that the U.S. do something, and then watch Islamic State rampage across the Middle East and say, not our problem. Internet jihadist recruitment and paint-by-numbers terrorism manuals by Islamic State and al Qaeda have shrunk the world, too. Foreign-policy planners and national leaders in Moscow, Tehran and Beijing get up every day and do one thing: think about how they can diminish or destabilize the U.S. Our leadership got up every day for six years and thought about . . . wind farms. When the world’s political winds shifted, Senate Democrats, as is their habit, chose not to see.
Charles Krauthammer
National Review, Oct. 30, 2014
Is this election really about nothing? Democrats might like to think so, but it’s not. First, like all U.S. elections, it’s about the economy. The effect of the weakest recovery in two generations is reflected in President Obama’s 13-point underwater ratings for his handling of the economy. Moreover, here is a president who proclaims the reduction of inequality to be the great cause of his administration. Yet it has radically worsened in his six years. The 1 percent are doing splendidly in the Fed-fueled stock market, even as median income has fallen.
Second is the question of competence. The list of disasters is long, highlighted by the Obamacare rollout, the Veterans Affairs scandal, and the pratfalls of the once-lionized Secret Service. Beyond mere incompetence is government intrusiveness and corruption, as in the overreach of national-security surveillance and IRS targeting of politically disfavored advocacy groups. Ebola has crystallized the collapse of trust in state authorities. The overstated assurances, the ever-changing protocols, the startling contradictions — the Army quarantines soldiers returning from West Africa while the White House denounces governors who did precisely the same with returning health-care workers — have undermined government in general, this government in particular. Obama’s clumsy attempt to restore confidence by appointing an Ebola czar has turned farcical. When the next crisis broke — a doctor home from West Africa develops Ebola after having traversed significant parts of New York City between his return and his infection — the czar essentially disappeared. Perhaps he is practicing self-quarantine.
But there’s a third factor contributing to the nation’s deepening anxiety — a sense of helplessness and confusion abroad as, in the delicate phrase of our secretary of defense, “the world is exploding all over.” Most voters don’t care about the details of Ukraine, the factions in Libya, or the precise battle lines of the Islamic State. But they do have a palpable sense of American weakness. This was brought home most profoundly by the videotaped beheadings of James Foley and Steven Sotloff. It wasn’t just the savagery that affected so many Americans but the contempt shown by these savages for America — its power, its resolve. Here is a jayvee team (Obama’s erstwhile phrase) defying the world’s great superpower, daring it to engage, confident that America will fail or flee. Obama got a ratings bump when he finally bestirred himself to order airstrikes and vowed to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State. Yet almost two months later, there is a realization that the disorganized, halfhearted, ad hoc U.S. reaction has made little difference. The vaunted 60-country coalition is nowhere to be seen. The barbarians are even closer to the gate. Moreover, U.S. flailing is not just demoralizing at home. It is energizing the very worst people abroad. Being perceived as what Osama bin Laden called the “strong horse” is, for a messianic movement on the march, the ultimate recruiting tool. Will this affect the election? While there is widespread dissatisfaction with the administration’s handling of the Islamic State, in most races it has not risen to the level of major campaign issue. Its principal effect is to reinforce an underlying, pre-existing sense of drift and disarray.
The anemic economy, the revulsion with governmental incompetence, and the sense of national decline are, taken together, exacting a heavy toll on Democratic candidates. After all, they represent not just the party now in government but the party of government. This portends a bad night for Democrats on Tuesday. State-by-state polls show continued Democratic control of the Senate to be highly tenuous. With one caveat. Democrats could make it up with the so-called ground game (i.e., getting out the vote on Election Day) that polls do not measure. Just a fraction of the unprecedented success the Democrats enjoyed in 2012 in identifying and turning out their voters (especially young, female, and minority) could shift the results by one or two points. That, in turn, could tilt several of the knife-edge, margin-of-error Senate races in their favor and transform what would otherwise be a Republican sweep into something of a stalemate. This could happen. More likely, however, is that the ground-game differential is minor, in which case the current disenchantment — with disorder and diminishment — simply overwhelms the governing Democrats.
The stage is set for a major Republican victory. If they cannot pull it off under conditions so politically favorable, perhaps they might consider looking for another line of work.
Ross Douthat
New York Times, Nov. 1, 2014
The 2014 midterms have featured many variables and one constant. Whether they’re running as incumbents or challengers, campaigning in blue or red or purple states, Democratic candidates have all been dragging an anchor: a president from their party whose approval ratings haven’t been north of 45 percent since last October. The interesting question is why. You may recall that Mitt Romney built his entire 2012 campaign strategy around the assumption that a terrible economy would suffice to deny Barack Obama a second term. Yet throughout 2012, with the unemployment rate still up around 8 percent, Obama’s approval numbers stayed high enough (the mid-to-upper 40s) to ultimately win. Whereas today the unemployment rate has fallen to 6 percent, a number Team Obama would have traded David Axelrod’s right kidney for two years ago, but the White House hasn’t benefited: The public’s confidence is gone, and it doesn’t seem to be coming back.
So when and how was it lost? When President Bush’s second-term job approval numbers tanked, despite decent-at-the-time economic numbers, the explanation was easy: It was Iraq, Iraq, Iraq. But nothing quite so pat presents itself in Obama’s case, so here are four partial theories instead. He gets blamed for Republican intransigence. This is the explanation that many Obama partisans favor, because it lets him mostly off the hook. The theory is that with the country as polarized as it is, and with the public inclined to blame the president for gridlock, the natural state for presidential approval ratings is a kind of regression toward the low 40s. This regression can be interrupted only by either some major unforeseen event or the emergence of a challenger — Romney for Obama, John Kerry for George W. Bush — who reminds voters that they dislike the other party more. But once the challenger is beaten, the process resumes: Just as Bush’s post-9/11 ratings declined steadily except when Kerry was on the scene, so too Obama’s numbers were doomed to decay once he won a second term.
It’s the economy — yes, still: This explanation raises an eyebrow at the last one and says, come on: If the economy were enjoying a 1990s-style boom, surely Obama would have a decent chance at Clinton-level approval ratings, gridlock or no gridlock! But even with the improving employment picture this recovery is still basically a disappointment, especially for the middle class. So the contrast between Obama’s position in 2012 and his weaker one today isn’t necessarily a case study in the economy not mattering. It’s an example of voter patience persisting for a while, and finally running out. It’s Obamacare — yes, still. This is the closest equivalent to Bush and the Iraq War: The health care law is Obama’s signature issue, it remains largely unpopular (even if support for full repeal is weak), and its initial stumbling coincided with the sharpest second-term drop in the president’s approval. Fixing the website may have stabilized the system, but by design Obamacare still creates many losers as well as winners, and a persistent dissatisfaction with shifts in coverage and costs could be the crucial drag keeping Americans dissatisfied with their president as well.
It’s foreign policy — and competence. One of the interesting features of the 2012 campaign was that as much as the economy made Obama’s sales pitch challenging, he had an edge that Democratic politicians often lack: The public trusted him on foreign policy. But that trust began to erode with the Edward Snowden affair, it eroded further during our non-attack on Bashar al-Assad last fall, and recent events in Ukraine and Iraq have essentially made Obama’s position irrecoverable: His approval rating on foreign policy is around 35 percent in most recent polling. But this harsh judgment probably isn’t explicitly ideological: The public isn’t necessarily turning neoconservative or pining for the days of Bush. Instead, it mostly reflects a results-based verdict on what seems like poor execution, in which the White House’s slow response to ISIS is of a piece with the Obamacare rollout and the V.A. scandal and various other second-term asleep-at-the-tiller moments. It’s a problem of leadership that reflects badly on liberalism but doesn’t necessarily vindicate conservatism.
And it’s because it isn’t explicitly ideological that the Democrats still have a chance in many states on Tuesday. From North Carolina to New Hampshire to Georgia, their candidates are being tugged downward by the Obama anchor, but they’re still bobbing, still only half-submerged, waiting for undecided to break (or just stay home). In many ways, Republicans have enjoyed in 2014 the kind of landscape they expected in 2012: a landscape in which nobody save Democratic partisans particularly supports President Obama anymore. What we’re about to find out is whether, amid that disillusionment, just being the not-Obama party is enough.
The Stakes on Tuesday: George Will, National Review, Nov. 1, 2014—Mix a pitcher of martinis Tuesday evening to fortify yourself against the torrent of election returns painting a pointillist portrait of the nation’s mind.
Why the GOP Needs a Stampede in the Midterms: John Podhoretz, New York Post, Nov. 2, 2014—For a year, the big question in political circles has been whether Tuesday’s midterm elections will be a Republican “wave.”
Obama Always Pointing the Finger of Blame at Someone Else: Michael Goodwin, New York Post, Nov. 2, 2014 —In the New York Times the other day, anonymous aides to President Obama trashed Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
Islamist Campaign Donors Overwhelmingly Back Democrats: David J. Rusin, PJ Media, Oct. 31, 2014—An analysis of federal campaign contributions finds that key figures at six of America’s most prominent Islamist organizations have favored Democrats over Republicans by a ratio of 12 to 1 since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
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