Thomas Sowell, in his article over at Real Clear Politics, gets to the root cause of high gasoline prices. China, India and our own elected leaders that have stifled oil exploration and production for decades.

Those conspiracy theories have been investigated time and again, without uncovering anything. But it is still a clever political ploy to ask for more investigations when gas prices rise. If nothing else, it distracts attention from those who have been blocking all attempts to enable us to use our own oil.

Nothing is easier, or more emotionally satisfying, than blaming high prices on those who charge them, rather than on those who cause them. (…)

Also at RCP, Marshall Whittmann takes the Kosites to task for dragging the “donkey party” even farther to the Left:

Presidential elections are won in the center by hawks and not by left wing populists with dovish inclinations. It is folly to reject a proven formula for success.

The right understands that historical memory is invaluable to a party or a movement. I am not making an argument for enshrining nostalgia for Clinton as a strategy for the future. Is there room for modernization in any movement? Absolutely. But that does not mean that you disparage the birthright that brought you to power after years in the wilderness.

These netroots types think they are something cutting edge when they are merely McGovernites with modems. One only wonders why the much maligned “Main Stream Media”, much less elected officials, pay so much attention to them.

Yeow! Let’s hope that “they” don’t pay any attention to Mr. Whittmann — wouldn’t want any sanity to creep into the consciousness of those on the Left before election day.

What brought me to RCP today was a link from Hugh Hewitt’s blog to this article by Richard Cohen: The Left’s Digital Lynch Mob. Cohen is a bit put off by the tone of the emails he’s been getting from Lefties upset with him over not finding Stephen Colbert’s White House Correspondents’ dinner performance less than humorous.

Truth to tell, I peeked into only a few of the e-mails. I did this because I would sometimes recognize a name I thought I knew, which was almost always a mistake. When I guilelessly clicked on the name, I would get a bucket of raw, untreated and disease-laden sewage right in the face. I’d quickly delete the thing, like closing a manhole cover, and move on, trying to figure out how to peek into an e-mail without getting the full, ugly message. No way.
(…)
But the message in this case truly is the medium. The e-mails pulse in my queue, emanating raw hatred. This spells trouble — not for Bush or, in 2008, the next GOP presidential candidate, but for Democrats. The anger festering on the Democratic left will be taken out on the Democratic middle. (Watch out Hillary!) I have seen this anger before — back in the Vietnam War era. That’s when the anti-war wing of the Democratic Party helped elect Richard Nixon. In this way, they managed to prolong the very war they so hated.

The hatred is back. I know it’s only words now appearing on my computer screen, but the words are so angry, so roiled with rage, that they are the functional equivalent of rocks once so furiously hurled during anti-war demonstrations. (…)

Once again, let’s hope that the deranged Left will totally ignore Richard Cohen and his ilk. OK, one last RCP link, featuring an excerpt from John Podhoretz’s new book, Can She Be Stopped?: Hillary Clinton Will Be the Next President of the United States Unless…

In fact, according to this analysis, [that her negatives are starting out at 40%] she might be easier to beat than any other Democrat precisely because she finds herself at the starting gate with so many people actively disliking, even hating her. Democrats would therefore be handing Republicans a great gift by nominating Hillary, because it wouldn’t require much energy or effort to ensure that tens of millions of Americans hold an unfavorable opinion of her in 2008. This analysis is tempting, reassuring, and promising. It is also wrong.

In previous decades, Hillary’s negatives would have torpedoed her candidacy. But there have been major changes in the past fifteen years that have altered the rules of American politics. The changes have to do with the way Americans think about politics, where Americans place themselves on the political spectrum, the increasing bitterness between the two parties, and the rallying effect now caused when a partisan politician becomes a target for the other side.
(…)
Democrats will dislike any Republican candidate, and Republicans will dislike any Democratic candidate. And the number of people in the middle, who decide elections, is actually shrinking. According to Karl Rove, Bush’s brilliant political adviser, by 2004 the size of the truly independent, truly unaligned electorate had shrunk to 7 percent. It had been well over 20 percent throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

Now, without George W. Bush in the mix to provoke the incredibly strong emotions, both positive and negative, he evoked in the 2004 election–emotions that helped drive the highest turnout in American history, some 122 million voters making up more than 61 percent of the electorate–perhaps the number in the middle will grow.
(…)
In short, the passionate and polarized partisan populace will not consider any candidate for high office sufficiently authentic unless that candidate provokes heated opposition from the other party. It is not enough that the candidate satisfy you. Indeed, when it comes right down to it, no candidate will ever really satisfy a passionate ideologue. But it is more than sufficient if the candidate in question really, really pisses off the other team.

I love listening to Hugh talking with Podhoretz — may have to rush out and pick up this book — ’08 is not that far away. Happy reading! (db)

Technorati Tags: Real Clear Politics, John Podhoretz, Marshall Whittmann, Thomas Sowell, Richard Cohen, Hillary Clinton

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 9th, 2006 at 10:17 am and is filed under Decision '06, Fever Swamp Madness, Here Comes Hillary!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.  |   Print This Post  |   Email This Post

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