Freedom Line Blog

If drawing a word picture of the increasingly uncivil unrest in the Middle East – and especially Egypt – the image would be dominated by the words “democracy,” “protest,” “youth,” and “change,” among others.  If the on-the-ground reporting and television pictures are to be believed, the one word uniting these themes is “hope.”  Specifically, hope in an end to corrupt government that robs people of wealth and ambition, as well as freedom and justice.

Writers of all stripes are focusing on the importance of President Barak Obama’s administration to ‘get it right’ on its position towards the protests in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Algeria, Lebanon, and Jordan.  To date, Obama’s only foreign policy precedent in this realm is the lack of solidarity he showed towards pro-reform forces in Iran.  Could this week’s much wider conflagration see the implosion of Obama’s claim to be the worldwide symbol of change-hope-youth-democracy-uplift?

The complicating factor in all this is an American strategic interest that supports secular dictators over Islamist radicals.  Continuing that choice makes sense if those are the only options, but the remarkable thing about the protests is that Islamist groups (like Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood) are not (yet) at the forefront of the movements.  Right now, it seems like most people are rebelling against the type of Mafioso government that keeps vast swaths of citizens repressed.

If nothing else, the knowledge and skill required at this level of foreign policy should serve as a warning to any 2012 presidential contenders (including the man likely to want a second term).  In these situations, you only get one chance to make the right decision, so you’d better be prepared.

And so it is that Rahm Emanuel is back on the ballot for Chicago mayor.  In a not unsurprising ruling, the Illinois Supreme Court overturned an appellate court’s decision to remove Emanuel’s name since he didn’t physically reside in the city for the year prior to next month’s election.  You (and everyone else reading this blog) may remember Emanuel was President Barack Obama’s White House Chief of Staff during that time.

No matter.  Saying that the appellate court’s commonsensical application of law to facts had “no basis in Illinois law” the state supremes ruled 7-0 in favor of judicial activism.  Nowhere in the relevant statute does it mention an “intent to return” exception to the residency requirement.

Never mind, though.  The “people” of Chicago support Emanuel’s candidacy by over 50%, meaning he’s likely to avoid a run-off and win outright next month.  In the event Emanuel does become the Second City’s next mayor, don’t be surprised if his conception of the rule of the law involves whatever interpretation serves him at the moment.  After all the “people” will have gotten the leadership they deserve.

It’s funny to whom the media chooses to give a pass in political coverage.  Conservative Senator John Thune (R-SD) has some in the Beltway crowd buzzing about an imminent presidential run, but the rationales given thus far should make thoughtful voters wary of jumping on the Thune 2012 bandwagon just yet.  From Time:

For some Republicans, Thune is the answer to their anxieties: the current crop of GOP contenders is dangerously weak, party leaders privately grumble. (Mitt Romney? Been there. Sarah Palin? Too divisive. Tim Pawlenty? Yawn.) His fans say Thune, 50, offers voters a fresh face, a tall and square-jawed profile plus a solid set of conservative credentials. He’s been a GOP hero ever since he unseated then Senate majority leader Tom Daschle in 2004. His home state’s proximity to all-important Iowa doesn’t hurt either. And he has at least one prominent cheerleader in the current Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell. “I’m a big John Thune fan,” McConnell said on Jan. 25. “I think he should [run].”

According to this description of Thune’s assets, the gentleman from South Dakota brings height, geography, and conservative positions to the presidency, but little else.  If the Republican establishment is looking for their party’s equivalent of Barack Obama (lanky, genial, and bereft of significant policy success), then Thune may be their man.  Should Thune run, however, Republican primary voters should insist on specifics from him as a guard against electing the Republican version of Barack Obama (inexperienced, politically tone deaf, and poor legislative skills).

Being a “fresh face” in politics means one doesn’t have the scars that come with surviving important political battles.  America is waging a war for her soul; now isn’t the time to elect someone else president because he’s too new to appreciate the old.

Barack Obama assured Americans throughout his campaign that if we hired him, he’d reduce the deficit.  Here is Obama in his own words from his closing infomercial of October 29, 2008:

I believe we need to usher in a new era of responsibility.  Across the country, families are tightening their belts, and so should Washington.  That’s why, for my energy plan, my economic plan and the other proposals you’ll hear tonight, I’ve offered spending cuts above and beyond their cost.  I’ll also go through the federal budget, line by line, eliminating programs that don’t work … and making the ones we do need work better and cost less.”

Here’s the ugly reality, over two years later:  The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) announced this week that the 2011 budget deficit will reach a record $1.5 trillion.  That follows $1.4 trillion and $1.3 trillion deficits in his first two years.  The 2008 deficit, for purposes of comparison, was $455 billion.

Something to consider when assessing Obama’s latest State of the Union address, and his upcoming promises over the next two years.

Is there any promise that Barack Obama has kept as President?  He certainly made plenty of them, only to break them.

Now, it appears that we have two more.  Two very big ones.  Testifying before the House Budget Committee this week, Medicare Chief Actuary Richard Foster was asked a series of “true” or “false” questions by Rep. Tom McClintock (R – California).  Replying to McClintock’s question whether Obama’s famous pledge that “If you like your present health insurance, you can keep it” was true or false, Foster replied, “not true in all cases.”  And when asked whether ObamaCare would reduce costs as he explicitly guaranteed, Foster replied, “I would say false, more so than true.”

If the political left clings to their “Bush Lied!” belief, where are they now and what do they have to say about Barack Obama?  Just curious.

If you thought President Obama’s tin-eared State of the Union speech was the last word in liberal misfires, then you clearly haven’t been paying close enough attention to the early machinations surrounding the 2012 U.S. Senate race in Connecticut. According to The Hill:

Liberals want Keith Olbermann to run for retiring Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (I-Conn.) seat.

The ploy to coax the former MSNBC host into the Democratic Senate primary was hatched by activists attending a conference in Pennsylvania over the weekend.

Facebook and Twitter pages are already active and a website is expected to go up in the coming days.

“We’re using our full set of campaign tools but they won’t go active until we get a little downtime while we’re in D.C.,” a blogger by the name of Stranded Wind wrote on the liberal website Daily Kos.

Nice of Stranded Wind to get involved. Also nice of him to have a handle that will perfectly describe the Olbermann campaign the day after it goes down to defeat.

Other than her congressional district, Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) true base of support comes from the millions of Tea Party members currently providing the grassroots dynamism of the Republican Party.  Bachmann raised so much money last cycle that some pundits think she’s running for U.S. Senate or even president.

The announcement that Bachmann is delivering an unofficial Republican response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address will heighten that speculation.  It will also anger the House Republican leadership that continues to pass over Bachmann.  First, it voted her down in a bid to be the new chair of the House GOP Conference Chair.  Bachmann pressed ahead with her own Tea Party caucus, raising even more money.  Now, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is slated to give the official Republican response, but Bachmann will deliver her own via the Tea Party Express website.

There may not be a way for Bachmann to capitalize on her media stardom, unless she continues to go her own way.  This will widen the gap between her and House GOP leadership, but if she wins a Senate seat or the presidency in 2012, the onus will be on leadership to make nice with her.

How fitting that on the 50^th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address news of Senator Joe Lieberman’s (D-CT) retirement hits the commentariat.   In today’s Senate, Lieberman is the last lion of an old-school approach to being liberal: hawkish on foreign policy, civil rights, and fiscal policy.  The statist mindset has so overtaken the modern Democratic Party that it’s hard to imagine “Give ‘em Hell” Harry Truman and Henry “Scoop” Jackson choosing to serve alongside the likes of Barack Obama and Barbara Boxer in what was once called “the most deliberative body in the world.”

Part of the corruption story of a once sane party is the outsize influence of public employee unions.  When public employees were allowed to unionize, Democratic politicians found it irresistible to negotiate sweetheart union contracts in exchange for campaign cash and poll workers.  After all, the wealth being wasted was just other people’s money.

With the economy sagging, the American people know who to blame.  Veteran Democratic pollster Doug Schoen says in today’s Wall Street Journal that if his party doesn’t start scaling back overpromised union benefits, independent voters will continue to vote Republican.  For current and future leaders of the Democratic Party looking for direction, it would be a good exercise to meditate on JFK’s famous admonition to “Ask not what your country can do for you.  Ask what you can do for your country.”

The nation’s capital is abuzz today over President Obama’s Wall Street Journal commentary, “Toward a 21st Century Regulatory System.” Astonishingly, Obama actually praises America’s free market system as “the greatest force for prosperity the world has ever known” while promising regulatory reform:

I am signing an executive order that makes clear that this is the operating principle of our government.  This order requires that federal agencies ensure that regulations protect our safety, health and environment while promoting economic growth.  And it orders a government-wide review of the rules already on the books to remove outdated regulations that stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive.  It’s a review that will help bring order to regulations that have become a patchwork of overlapping rules, the result of tinkering by administrations and legislators of both parties and the influence of special interests in Washington over decades.”

Whether Obama speaks honestly, or simply seeks to deceive the electorate in anticipation of 2012, lies beyond our powers of divination.  The available evidence, however, justifies extreme skepticism.

One cause for doubt stands out immediately.  In identifying examples of the federal regulatory state run amok, the best Obama can do is point to saccharine, saying that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) permits it for consumption in coffee while his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) labels it a “dangerous chemical.”  That’s it?  That’s the best example he can cite?

Just one month ago, Obama’s own Federal Communications Commission (FCC) flagrantly defied two-to-one public opposition, a unanimous Court of Appeals and a bipartisan group of 300 members of Congress by voting to regulate the Internet via “Net Neutrality.” Obama claims in his column that he aims to prevent “regulations that stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive,” but that’s exactly what “Net Neutrality” will do.  The FCC seeks to regulate an Internet sector that has thrived over the past two decades precisely because the federal government has refrained from interfering with regulations such as this.  The result will be fewer incentives for continued Internet investment, expansion and innovation, as well as declining service as capacity fails to keep pace with demand.

Additionally, Obama’s Labor Department seeks to impose “card check,” which will end secret ballot voting in union elections, and his EPA seeks to impose global warming carbon cap-and-tax regulations.  Both of those agenda items failed miserably in Congress even when controlled by Democratic supermajorities, but Obama’s regulatory agencies now seek to impose them anyway.

So Obama talks a good game in today’s op/ed.  But unless he issues an immediate cease-and-desist order on “Net Neutrality,” card check and cap-and-tax, his words will prove just as meaningless as his other broken promises.

The GOP rank and file may be in love with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, but there’s one issue on which the Trenton Thunder is out of the Republican mainstream: it seems that he’s the only conservative in America that doesn’t want Chris Christie to run for president.

Yet despite the fact that Christie has repeatedly — and dramatically — forsworn any interest in making a presidential bid, a shocking new Zogby Poll shows that Christie is the Republican favorite for the party’s presidential nomination in 2012, with a whopping 10 point lead over his closest competitor (Mitt Romney). Even more amazing? Christie is the only Republican who currently outpolls President Obama in a general election. Not bad for a man who’s spent one year as the Governor of New Jersey.

Christie’s denials of presidential ambition (at least for this cycle) have been positively Shermanesque. In fact, they’ve been so emphatic that going back on them may undermine his reputation for straight talk. But with numbers like these, look for the Draft Christie movement to catch fire in 2011.

If the Wikileaks State Department cables are ever compiled into a book, one of the chapters should contain the rise and fall of Fidel Castro’s affinity for President Barack Obama.  It’s hard not to smirk when reading this article from The Guardian outlining the Cuban despot’s excitement that the candidate of “hope” and “change” would take America in a leftward direction.

Considered “obsessed” with Obama by U. S. diplomats stationed in Havana, Castro wrote several op-eds in a state-run newspaper praising the president for his speech in Cairo, Egypt.  The dictator also liked Obama’s stance on global warming.  That is, until The One broke the dear leader’s heart at the Copenhagen Conference.  (Apparently, wanting some concessions from China before handing over climate reparations went too far for Latin America’s oldest communist.)

Get in line, Fidel.  You and Che Guevara-sporting American Left will have to content yourselves “only” with the first critical step towards socialized medicine (Obamacare), and unprecedented nationalizations of the finance and auto industry.

Whether or not he ends up being a presidential candidate in 2012, Mike Huckabee is already making his mark as one of President Obama’s most insightful critics. After Obama spent last week’s press conference announcing a deal on the Bush tax cuts comparing Republicans to hostage-takers and bemoaning the intransigence of congressional liberals, Huckabee made what should have been an obvious point: you don’t celebrate bipartisan accomplishments by lambasting politicians on both sides of the aisle. Per CNN:

“The most bizarre part of the whole process was watching President Obama self-destruct at the podium yesterday,” Huckabee told the National Journal in an interview published Monday, when asked about the tax deal.

“I was just stunned – I really couldn’t believe that a man that was elected president was as amateurish as he was, and essentially launched from the podium at some of his own, taking aim and mowing down everybody in D.C. and walking away having not understood that he just lost a lot of people,” he said.

Presidents who are sore losers are deeply unbecoming. As for sore winners? Well, that’s a relatively new phenomenon. And there’s a reason for that, Mr. President.

Who knew that a week beginning with liberal howling about President Barack Obama’s “tax deal” with congressional Republicans would end with bitter disagreements between conservative stalwarts about whether the deal is actually good?  Charles Krauthammer thinks it’s the biggest Keynesian stimulus in American history.  Jonah Goldberg disagrees.  So does Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), arguing that pro-growth tax policy is the key first step towards jumpstarting the economy (spending cuts are next).

For his part, President Obama prefers to outsource his public communications duties to predecessor Bill Clinton.  After Clinton started taking questions at a joint press conference, Obama excused himself to attend the White House Christmas party; as if the sight of him leaving Clinton to speak on behalf of the administration didn’t matter.  Either Obama doesn’t care that he looked like the impatient junior partner to Clinton’s elder, me-first statesman, or he failed to appreciate the optics of his televised abdication.

Hopefully, we can chalk up all this confusion to it being a Friday at the end of a long congressional session.  Otherwise…

Amid solid recommendations to put Medicare and Medicaid on a sustainable financial path, Obama Debt Commission member and Roadmap author Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) staked out very defensible ground for today’s conservative leaders to Roll Call’s Mort Kondrake:

And the incoming chairman of the House Budget Committee described himself as having been mentored by the late Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.), believing in “a prosperous opportunity society built atop a solid safety net.”

“I am not a laissez-faire, Hobbsian libertarian,” he told me. “I believe in a circumscribed safety net, one that helps people get back on their feet and is there for people who can’t help themselves. But I believe in a pro-growth, limited-government, free-enterprise society that encourages people to make the most of their lives.”

Anyone else for a one-on-one debate between President Barack Obama and Rep. Ryan on healthcare reform next January?

In a wide-ranging piece, The Daily Caller explains the continuing mainstream media bias against Andrew Breitbart and anyone else who dares to shine a light on government corruption.  Breitbart’s castigation during the Shirley Sherrod episode spurred him to research liberal claims he only spotlighted Sherrod’s discriminatory comments to an NAACP crowd as a quick gimmick.  After four and a half months of interviews, Breitbart is in the early days of a multi-stage release on the depth and breadth of the Pigford settlement scandal that so far has cost taxpayers over $2 billion.

Since President Barack Obama has a direct link to the newest $1.15 billion funding the Pigford II settlement round, don’t be surprised if the White House comes under continuing pressure to defend itself for its legislation-for-votes deal-making.

From President Obama’s remarks earlier today defending his deal with Congressional Republicans to prevent tax increases:

I’ve said before that I felt that the middle-class tax cuts were being held hostage to the high-end tax cuts. I think it’s tempting not to negotiate with hostage-takers, unless the hostage gets harmed. Then people will question the wisdom of that strategy. In this case, the hostage was the American people, and I was not willing to see them get harmed.

Not quite “we refuse to negotiate with terrorists.” Let’s hope the press conference wasn’t airing on Al-Jazeera.

Yuval Levin notices an interesting trend in the various plans coming out of the Obama Debt Commission.  When the proposals are added together there seems to be a consensus building towards overhauling federal healthcare entitlement spending.  If done correctly, it could be a moment for conservatives to inject market principles like choice and opportunity into the system.

There is growing agreement in American politics that the challenge of our time is cleaning up the horrible mess created by the Great Society—the mess that is our approach to domestic discretionary spending but above all the mess that is our health-care entitlement system. That is the essence of our debt and deficit problems.

The question is whether we can deal with that mess by keeping the basic structure of the Great Society entitlements while trimming significantly elsewhere and massively raising taxes, or whether we must deal with it by fundamentally reforming those Great Society entitlements while trimming significantly elsewhere and spreading the tax burden more widely but less heavily to encourage growth and innovation. The latter is fairly obviously the answer to that question—given demographic and economic realities, and given the kind of country the American public wants to live in—but it will take a little time before that really sinks in. It is a very good thing, though, that the question is now being asked.

Reforming (or rather, transforming) the Great Society into a fiscally sustainable, free market-guided, consumer-driven system would be the kind of bipartisan project worthy of the era President Barack Obama and his congressional counterparts find themselves.  Solving that puzzle would establish the president’s sought for legacy while enacting the kind of policy changes the Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and other conservative intellectuals champion.

H/T: National Review Online

Not even former President Bill Clinton could sway the hearts and wallets of the voters who shunned the United States in favor of Russia and Qatar to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.  Apparently, the ad-lib prone ex-president deviated from the script, plugging his eponymous global initiative instead of making America’s case for hosting the world’s most popular sporting event.

Instead, that honor will be enjoyed by Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the desert Muslim emirate of Qatar.  Coming on the heels of the Olympic Committee’s rejection of the Obama Administration’s push to bring the Summer Games to Chicago that means the two most recent Democratic presidents (by definition, acceptable citizens in the international community) have failed to turn their supposed popularity into victories for their countries.
Oh well; wait ‘til next, next decade…

“The American people did not vote for gridlock”

That was President Obama following his White House meeting with senior congressional leaders (including heretofore marginalized Republicans) earlier today. A few things are wrong with this:

1. Of the many tasks for which Barack Obama is demonstrably unqualified, interpreting election results is clearly towards the top of the list.

2. To the extent that the 2010 midterm elections can be boiled down to a single trend, it wasn’t the American people voting for anything — it was them voting against Obama’s agenda.

3. The American people don’t vote for process. They saw the country headed too far to the left and wanted to stop it. While the electorate may not think gridlock is ideal, they would probably prefer it over another two years like the ones we just had.

4. It’s amazing how many Democrats are spinning the 2010 elections as a mandate for the two parties to work together (not that this is a particularly innovative narrative for parties that crawl back into the minority). The 2010 election saw disgust for the two major parties at an all-time high and faith in our political institutions at an all-time low. This is just a hunch, but I don’t think the resulting message was “we’d like to see more effective cooperation between the party we hate and the party we really hate”.

Senik’s Law of Subsidies: Subsidizing any industry into existence requires destroying its more efficient competitors. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of green jobs.

Luckily, the Obama Administration hasn’t been able to get its hands on the noose with which it intends to strangle the energy industry (I’m sorry … the industry that produces energy that actually works): that would be cap and trade. Thus, it’s had to settle for the silver medal of plowing money into “green jobs” that can’t balance the books without a chunk of your paycheck to stem the tide of red ink. The problem, of course, is that since conventional fuel sources like coal and petroleum are still the most feasible energy sources, the government is underwriting jobs that serve no discernible demand in the consumer market. Consider this passage from a story in today’s Washington Post:

With nearly 15 million Americans out of work and the unemployment rate hovering above 9 percent for 18 consecutive months, policymakers desperate to stoke job creation have bet heavily on green energy. The Obama administration channeled more than $90 billion from the $814 billion economic stimulus bill into clean energy technology, confident that the investment would grow into the economy’s next big thing.

What could go wrong? After all, if the administration is “confident”, there’s no reason to doubt, right? The Obama White House is know for nothing if not its clairvoyance (we’ll leave aside the question of why the “next big thing” would require subsidies). Oh, Mr. President, we hate to interrupt your dance with delusion, but reality would like to cut in:

The industry’s growth has been undercut by the simple economic fact that fossil fuels remain cheaper than renewables. Both Obama administration officials and green energy executives say that the business needs not just government incentives, but also rules and regulations that force people and business to turn to renewable energy.

Without government mandates dictating how much renewable energy utilities must use to generate electricity, or placing a price on the polluting carbon emitted by fossil fuels, they say, green energy cannot begin to reach its job creation potential.

Forget Afghanistan. Energy policy is the administration’s real parallel to Vietnam. We must destroy our energy sources in order to save them.