Michael Barone’s Brilliance Displayed Again
I’ve long thought that Michael Barone is one of the most intelligent political analysts in the business. RealClearPolitics links to his most recent analysis. The bad news for Democrats is that it contains alot of good news for Republicans, namely Barone’s listing of how the facts have changed the direction of this race. Here’s how Mr. Barone starts with Iraq:
In January 2007, when George W. Bush ordered the surge strategy, which John McCain had advocated since the summer of 2003, Barack Obama informed us that the surge couldn’t work. The only thing to do was to get out as soon as possible.
That stance proved to be a good move toward winning the presidential nomination but it was poor prophecy. It is beyond doubt now that the surge has been hugely successful, beyond even the hopes of its strongest advocates, like Frederick and Kimberly Kagan. Violence is down enormously, Anbar and Basra and Sadr City have been pacified, Prime Minister Maliki has led successful attempts to pacify Shiites as well as Sunnis, and the Iraqi parliament has passed almost all of the “benchmark” legislation demanded by the Democratic Congress, all of which Barack Obama seems to have barely noticed or noticed not at all. He has not visited Iraq since January 2006 and did not seek a meeting with Gen. David Petraeus when he was in Washington.
Facts matter except with Democratic activists. Once you enter the Democratic activists’ world, though, anything that highlights inaccuracies in Democratic stump speeches is ignored and frequently chastized.
The bad news for Democrats is that the presidential race won’t be won by Democrat activists. It will be decided by people that are open to hearing about improvements in Iraq.
Here’s another of Michael Barone’s observations:
Other examples of facts undermining Democratic narratives readily occur. Last week charges were dropped against the seventh of eight Marines accused of atrocities in Haditha. The narrative, peddled by Democratic Congressman (and Marine veteran) John Murtha, of depraved American soldiers massacring innocent Iraqis seems to be falling victim to the facts.
It’s the Right Blogosphere’s duty to inform people of Murtha’s corruption, something that we’ve done at Murtha Must Go. It’s also the Right Blogosphere’s duty to inform people of related corruption, specifically, informing them of Paul Kanjorski’s admitting that Democrats lied to their activists about their ability to end the Iraq War.
Thouogh I don’t see these incidents driving many voters from the blue column into the red column, they have a cumulative effect because they affect credibility. Once that’s gone, the fight becomes an uphill fight.
And the fact of $4 gasoline has undermined the narrative that alternative forms of energy can painlessly supply our needs. Public opinion has switched sharply and now favors drilling offshore and, by inference, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Democrats are scrambling to argue that drilling wouldn’t make any difference, and that anyway the oil companies aren’t drilling enough on federal land they currently lease.
I suspect that this issue will effect House and Senate races more than it’ll affect the presidential race. That isn’t to say that it won’t have an impact on the presidential campaign, just that the impact on the House and Senate races will be bigger.
Part of that advantage will be due in part to the NRCC pushing this agenda alot harder than Sen. McCain will be pushing it. While Sen. McCain is sure to talk about it in his stump speech, drilling on the OCS and in ANWR will be the majority of House and Senate candidates’ speeches.
Locally, Elwyn Tinklenberg and Al Franken will be fighting an uphill fight the rest of the way because they’re totally locked into the environmentalists’ position. That gives Michele Bachmann and Norm Coleman a significant advantage in those races.
All of this matters because the rejection of the Republicans in the 2006 elections was a verdict on competence more than ideology. The Republicans seemed incompetent at relieving victims of Katrina, producing success in Iraq and even policing the House page programs. The Democrats could not do worse and might do better. But in the 19 months since November 2006, some important facts have changed.
Democrats are wed to being ideologically pure because that’s what the Nutroots demands of them.
Finally this is a great question that the Right Blogosphere should ask of liberal candidates:
When asked why he changed his position on an issue, John Maynard Keynes said: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, John McCain, Iraq War, Gas Crisis, Oil Exploration, Outer Continental Shelf, ANWR, Norm Coleman, Michele Bachmann, Al Franken, Elwyn Tinklenberg, Election 2008
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
June 21st, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Obama: When the facts change, I change my story or my staff or my race or my religion….
June 21st, 2008 at 3:37 pm
It helps if the facts support your positions, however — a key fact that you apparently neglect when it comes to anyone’s “brilliance.”
For example, the surge. If it’s working so well, why have the Iraqis made little if any political progress? They can’t agree on a constitution, on how to share oil revenues (at least those left after ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and some small French company that somehow got a taste 36 years ago and so shall, now), on how to govern themselves… in short, they can’t even agree to disagree and get on with the getting on. The only thing on which the Iraqis seem to be in agreement is that they don’t want us there any more, and if the criminal Bush forces them to commit to his current plan of occupation, they’re going to come together to kick us out.
For example, Democrats ability to end the war has been curtailed by obstructionist republicans. Don’t misunderstand; Democrats are mighty upset with the leadership over this (and other issues of being in the majority), but also see that getting things done in a Senate with a non-existent majority, and specifically the problem with the traitor Lieberman, is not going to happen.
For all the republican spin surrounding these troubling issues, as you admit, they won’t drive votes from blue to red or vice-versa. Not when 80% of the country thinks we’re on the wrong track, 75% thinks the criminal Bush has done a miserable job, and Obama opening an astounding 15-point lead in Pennsylvania in the space of 2 weeks time. (So much for the fabled fracture among Democrats, even more-so given the supporting numbers in these polls!)
Playing fast and loose with the facts is republican stock-in-trade. For example, the suggestion that flip-flopping on offshore drilling will somehow impress the all-important independents that McSame should be their choice. (And to a lesser extent, supposing that McSame now is in favor of drilling in ANWR because he flip-flopped on offshore drilling. The facts say otherwise.) Offshore drilling in California is a non-starter. We like our pristine coasts. The people of San Francisco know all too well and first hand what an oil spill — even a small one — can do to the environment.
If the people of Florida are stupid enough to allow drilling off their coasts, then they will have to bear the consequences of their action. I, for one, will be telling them to shut up when the first oil spill destroys their coast line. Now is the time to be thinking about the inevitable, not when it happens and we all look back and say “if only we’d done something about it before we drilled!” The one thing that no one in Florida can say is that nobody knew an accident would happen, because I’m putting it in writing here, today. And thousands of progressives are putting it in writing, today, that offshore drilling — and drilling in ANWR — is a huge mistake.
I think you’ve confused circumstances with facts, because the fundamentals of the situation have not changed, only the circumstances. To whit, gas at $4 a gallon is the result of market manipulation. Even if we were currently drilling offshore and in Alaska, the price of gas would still be more affected by commodity markets, as the limited domestic supplies are insufficient to impact the world-wide market beyond a few cents per gallon. (For more understanding of how market manipulation effects prices, may I suggest the great Marxist Keynes’ The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.)
What is far more revealing is that the Operation for Iraqi Liberation (or OIL) is entering the phase where the corporate interests are poised to win big. With oil futures at an all-time high, only now we’re getting around to signing major drilling, refining and transportation agreements with the Iraqis? The fact that this is happening when the clock is running out on the Bush cabal is far more telling than McSame proposing some cockamamie drill-your-way-out of the energy crisis tomfoolery. The circumstance that gas is $4 a gallon is resolved by drilling off Florida, is as Keynes said, “misleading and disastrous if we attempt to apply it to the facts of experience.”
June 21st, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Despite his usual partisan babbling Rocky does make a couple points. The price of oil and thereby gasoline, is not about to come down, anytime soon, no matter how many new wells or refineries we build. Its an international market whether Congress likes it or not, there isn’t much they can do except cry about it, which they are very good at. Tax big oil? All that will do is drive the price up accordingly. Nationalize the refineries? You probably couldnt do Exxon Mobil a bigger favor, if they dont own it, they dont have to maintain it, or use it. There plenty of refineries in other countries. Of course it will cost us more to import our gasoline as well won’t it.
As far as the danger of new spills drilling for more of our own known sources goes, Off shore technics have come a long ways since the 1969 spill at Santa Barabra Rocky. We still have active platforms from Long Beach to Gaviota, havent had a spill since then have we? We still have platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, they weren’t any spills after Katrina were there? Or did Bush have hand in that as well? Have we terribly stressed the caribou in ANWR? They still seem to be migrating.
But the bottom line is, we need to reduce our dependency on foriegn oil by roughly 35 per cent. Drilling is only part of the answer. Clean coal, solar, wind and nuclear are the other parts. This is nothing we haven’t known since 1977 when it first broke the dollar a gallon barrier. Lets see that was 4 Republican and 3 Democrat administrations ago, and Iv lost count of how many Democratic and Republican Congresses.
May 5th, 2010 at 12:31 am
the oil spill in Mexico would surely be one of the greatest environmental disasters for this year.-.;