tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post7490848624240613844..comments2024-03-29T02:03:49.151-04:00Comments on History Unfolding: What's happening in Iraq?David Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05020082243968071584noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-24293996559337586722007-12-16T11:11:00.000-05:002007-12-16T11:11:00.000-05:00DavidI guess the thing with HRC is that, at some l...David<BR/><BR/>I guess the thing with HRC is that, at some level, the dirty tricks have hardly begun.<BR/><BR/>By which I mean the Republicans will play this rough, and much rougher. And that won't stop if she, or Obama, wins the presidency.<BR/><BR/>So you have Obama, who has shown himself on some occasions to be thin-skinned, touchy, perhaps? Imagine what happens when the Republican war machine gets ahold of that.<BR/><BR/>All this talk of 'bipartisanship' of a 'new era' with the next president is, I suspect, B-S. The Republicans have not finished their Revolution, and the Democrats are only slowly waking up to a very changed battlefield: where the Supreme Court is tilted against them and where the legislative refrain of the minority party is 'no, nowhere, never' (the Hungarian slogan at the end of WWI, when Hungary was reduced to 1/3rd of its pre war size by the Versailles Treaty). Think the Republican Party (legislative) in California.<BR/><BR/>For the foreseeable future the US is locked into that fundamental disagreement on the future character of the United States. I was recently called a 'humanist' by a Ron Paul supporter on the web, it took me a while to figure out that that was, in his mind, a mortal insult.<BR/><BR/>The party of the right has a set set of views on taxes, on the unilateralist exercise of military power and foreign policy, on the role of the state in the provision of pensions and healthcare, on the religious character of the United States, on the question of global warming, and on 'social conservatism' which will not be moved. Only John McCain shows much sign of deviation from that orthodoxy and I suspect he is toast because of it (where this California's electoral system, one could see an independent McCain becoming President, but this is not California).<BR/><BR/>So whoever wins the Presidency, if they are to win the Presidency for the Democrats, will have to be really, truly tough. Because the shells ain't gonna stop fallin' just because you are President.<BR/><BR/>Obama seems a cipher to me. He pledges to be a different sort of candidate, but I'm not clear he really is (nor is that, I have argued above, necessarily desirable). He pledges to reach across the party divide, but is that really practicable? From what has been said about him, he seems at time thin-skinned, touchy, wearied by the fray. His policy ideas are much as a muchness with the other 2.<BR/><BR/>I take your point about HRC in that she is not an entirely attractive character, and her husband's peccadilloes could be a serious weak point. But she is an insider, and she is as tough as heck. And she has learned from past mistakes.<BR/><BR/>You know the nightmare. The Democrats pick Obama, and an inexperienced Obaman team goes down to defeat against a Giuliani or Romney and their smooth, well-financed and ruthless machine. A forest of internet stories about his moslem roots, etc.<BR/><BR/>And then we really are in trouble, as citizens of a world led by a man like that.<BR/><BR/>Normally I try to take a detached, ironic, anglic view of American politics: whether your citizens go broke due to medical bills isn't really a neither-nor to me, being pragmatic. But when we come to your Middle Eastern policy, or to global warming, or to the 'launch on warning' stance of your nuclear forces, then we are in the territory of where your decisions change the planet for me and my family.<BR/><BR/>Always good to share views. I remain a firm fan of this blog and look forward (I hope) to reading your next book.<BR/><BR/>ValuethinkerAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com