Hewitt Blog

Take two of the key bits of commentary from this morning's set of opinions --Wlliam McGurn's "Are Americans Bigots?" from the Wall Street Journal and Pete Wehner's "The Increasingly Self-Pitying Obama White House" from Commentary's "Contentions" blog--and throw in Karl Rove's guest turn on Rush's program yesterday as well as Rove's commentary on Fox last night.

You don't have to agree with all or much or even any of this small slice of the commentariat pie to recognize that the Bush West Wing --McGurn, Wehner and Rove are all alums-- was full of idea guys and communicators, serious political and policy operatives with cross-over abilities in the world of ideas and equipped with the tools to communicate those ideas.

This trio doesn't just throw off the semi-annual "I'm still alive and lobbying" Washington Post op-ed, they are machines of commentary and analysis, most of it top-drawer, must-read material.

Which brings me to the cliche-bound writing staff of President Obama and his West Wing team of Emanuel, Jarrett, Gibbs etc.

Does anyone think that, two or more years after Emanuel, Jarrett et al exit Pennsylvania Avenue that they will be engaged in the war of ideas and not only engaged, but influential? 

Does anyone think that any of the current Obama writers will have anything like the sway of McGurn or Wehner --outside of the next evolution of JournoList and the Washington Post blog page that is? 

It is increasingly obvious except to the left-wing of the Manhattan-Beltway media elite that Team Obama didn't bring a light of lightbulbs with them.  Summers, of course, is a genuine intellect, but he's apparently spent much of his time organizing plots and conducting purges.  Orszag had a reputation for candle-power, but the mess he ran away from has shattered that myth.  Anybody else running point for the Obama idea machine these days?

Chicago operators all, and David Axelrod's amusing appearances on weekend shows tell us he's all they have left, and that isn't much.

When the shellacking comes in November, the president is going to have to recalibrate and restock.  He should start with some genuinely smart, curious people, and not merely campaign veterans who can read cross-tabs or college kids with a shared love of Alinksy. 

.


 

I will be on as a guest of guest host Tavis Smiley.

Hopefully we will be able to talk about the "why" behind President Obama's collapsing approval ratings.  

.  

How is that GQ could "discover" more about Rand Paul's college days at Baylor, and the Washington Post show more interest in that story here and here, than either publication ever reported on the president's college days at Columbia/Occidental?

This is the JournoLista mentality at work, though without the handy diagrams that JournoList passed out via the list serve:  Find a "fact," produce a meme, all the lefties join in. 

It won't work with Kentucky, and increasingly the campaign to destroy Susan Angle shows signs of backfiring as well.  Voters are so tied of the manipulation of the news by the left and so immune to it that the elections will be decided on the key issues and not on tales of behavior from college days or obscure positions taken two decades ago.

In this political environment, the JournoListas are reduced to trying to attack GOP candidates on any grounds that will divert attention from Democrats' voting records on the stimulus, TARP, GM, spending generally, and of course Obamacare.  The Missouri vote last week was a first indication that a hundred attempted diversions will not work, except to continually expose the amazing double standard and the woeful collapse of the credibility fo the MSM.

.
 

When I was in Europe in July I asked guide after guide if he or she thought there was any life in the old churches of the region.

The answer was, sadly, always no. 

But not everyone has given up on the protestant church in its historic home.

Ted Cox, for most of the past seven years a missionary to western Europe, joins me on today's program.  Ted is with Greater Europe Mission which has been operating in the countries of the continent since the end of W.W. II.  Ted and his family's personal web site is CoxesQuarterly.com.  I'll also be discussing GemStoneMedia with Ted, and his tutorial How2Video as well. 

.  

That is the conclusion of Ali Akbar Javanfekr, Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s senior media adviser and the director of IRNA, Iran’s official news agency, as told to New Yorker writer Jon Lee Anderson, whose chilling portrait of Iran as it is today, post-suppression of the vote and on the threshold of nukes, "After the Crackdown," should be in every Administration briefcase and the briefing pile of every candidate.

The menace of Iran is so profound that it seems hard to imagine that North Korea, seizing ships and shelling islands this morning, is just as unstable. 

The election is supposed to be about the economy, and if the fragile piece holds in the Middle East and the nut in the NK stays on the brink of war as opposed to crossing it, that is indeed what Americans will vote on.

But the GOP has got to keep making the argument that our weakness abroad, and especially the president's obsequiousness and indecision, has emboldened our enemies, especially the two most fanatical regimes of all.
When a new Congress comes to D.C. in 2011, it must have campaigned on a strong defense and not just an end to waste and corruption.

.


 

Carol Browner, the White House global warming csar, yesterday left open the possibility of jamming climate change legislation through the lame duck session of Congress.

The appropriate response would have been to note that we live in a representative democracy, and if the people vote overwhelmingly for a dramatic course correction --a "U Turn" in fact-- that it would be profoundly wrong to attempt to set aside that expression of the people's sovereignty.

But of course Team Obama blew off the people's will following state-wide elections in New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts, so there is no reason to believe that Democrats would think twice about a jam down of a carbon ta, or card check for that matter, or another massive pay-off to union pals.

Which is why it is crucial now for the GOP's 41 votes in the Senate to announce they will refuse such lame duck initiatives, period.  The reason:  The economy will begin to gain traction the moment America's employers see an end in sight to this Congress and all it represents.  The lame duck lunacy will keep the recovery, and the job creation, at bay.  A letter from 41 Republican senators stating that major legislation will wait for 2011 would help the recovery right now.

To help keep Browner's vision of command-and-control descending on every energy source in America from happening, please sign to be active in support of free market solutions to our current problems up via the Winning In November banner above.  An informed and active grassroots network across the country is the key to keeping the remnants of this Congress from even more disastrous policy choices. Americans for Prosperity is putting that together via Winning In November.  Please join up and join in.

.



  

My Washington Examiner column puts the debate over the GZM into the context of similar disputes over similar "sacred spaces."

. 

The Monday morning column from Clark Judge:

Too Many Yeses for the Party of No?
By Clark S. Judge, managing director, White House Writers Group (www.whwg.com <http://www.whwg.com> ); chairman, Pacific Research Institute (www.pacificresearch.org <http://www.pacificresearch.org> )
 
The rhetorical trajectories of Washington can be bemusing to behold.
 
In the past week, the White House had taken up the mantra, “Party of No,” and this weekend even conservative leaning Sunday talk show panels and interviewers adopted the chant.
 
As in, when it comes to the president’s program for reviving the economy, all the Republicans can say is “no”.
 
Yes, the president wants another, how many more dollars packaged as what program now.  Can you imagine?  The GOP says “no.”  We’re going to tax all those rich people.  Again, the GOP says “no.”   You get the idea.
 
But it is all a rhetorical fog.  There are real choices on the table for dealing with the impending second dip in the economy. They are not between no and yes. They are between two distinct strategies for economic revival – and each strategy has a history.

 Read More...

Things are getting worse in Mexico according to the Los Angeles Times this morning.

With the prospects increasing of a failed state dominated by the cartels on our southern border, what has President Obama done about increasing border security?

How much of the real fence --not the failed "virtual" fence-- has been accelerated during his tenure?  How much of the stimulus was spent on border security?  How has Janet Napolitano done in her job as tsar of border security?

The president's indifference to conditions along the border and the escalating chaos in Mexico is of a piece with his general nonchalance to all crises abroad that cannot be blamed on America.  Iran is about to go nuclear, Chavez is increasingly erratic and threatening, and parts of Mexico are sliding into the status of Somalia West.

But the president thinks this is "Recovery Summer" and that the car business is doing just fine.



 

It will be difficult for Mayor Bloomberg to dismiss Nada Bolourchi as an anti-Muslim bigot.  She was born in Iran and her mother was on one of the planes that struck the World Trade Center. Read all of her op-ed in today's Washington Post, but especially these paragraphs:

[A] mosque near Ground Zero will not move this conversation forward. There were many mosques in the United States before Sept. 11; their mere existence did not bring cross-cultural understanding. The proposed center in New York may be heralded as a peace offering -- may genuinely seek to focus on "promoting integration, tolerance of difference and community cohesion through arts and culture," as its Web site declares -- but I fear that over time, it will cultivate a fundamentalist version of the Muslim faith, embracing those who share such beliefs and hating those who do not.

The Sept. 11 attacks were the product of a hateful ideology that the perpetrators were willing to die for. They believed that all non-Muslims are infidels and that the duty of Muslims is to renounce them. I am not a theologian, but I know that the men who killed my mother carried this message in their hearts and minds. Obedient and dutiful soldiers, they marched toward their promised rewards in heaven with utter disregard for the value of the human beings they killed.

I know Ground Zero is not mine alone; I must share this sanctuary with tourists, politicians, anyone who chooses to come, whatever their motivations or intentions. But a mosque nearby -- even a proposed one -- is already transforming the site from a sacred ground for reflection, so desperately needed by the families who lost loved ones, to a battleground for religious and political ideologies. So many people from different nationalities and religions were killed that day. This site should be a neutral place for all to come in peace and remember. I believe my mother would have thought so as well.