May 6, 2008
McCain and Judges (David Keene)
Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) speech today at Wake Forest in North Carolina represents a real attempt by the Republican presidential hopeful to outline a judicial philosophy that will appeal to the sometimes skeptical conservatives who make up an important part of the GOP base and to contrast his views with those of Obama and Clinton.
Those who haven’t read it should. It is a serious attempt to lay out the candidate’s thinking on a crucial issue, and while some are characterizing it as merely an attempt to “woo” the right, if he means what he says, it has to be taken as much more than that. It doesn’t answer every question or concern conservatives have raised about McCain on the issue of the role of the courts, how he would go about selecting nominees and his willingness to accept the fact that fair-minded judges who read and understand the Constitution might decide differently than he would — but it answers a lot of them. > Read More
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What's This April 29, 2008
Obama and Wright (David Keene)
In politics, it’s more often than not your friends and supporters who end up doing you in — something that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is learning.
I would guess that by now, the young senator wishes he’d never stepped into the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church a couple of decades ago. Indeed, after his minister finished speaking to the Press Club yesterday, he’s probably wishing the man would just shut up.
Part of Obama’s problem stems from the fact that while folks have been impressed by his rhetoric, they don’t really know all that much about him. They’re beginning to realize that he’s a fairly conventional liberal when it comes to his votes — which are often at odds with his rhetoric — but now they’re quite naturally looking to his associates and those close to him to figure out exactly where he might be coming from. > Read More
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What's This March 18, 2008
Blowing It (David Keene)
The Republican Party in Illinois is in terrible shape, what with its last elected governor in the slammer and its inability to hold onto the historically heavily Republican congressional seat vacated this year by former House Speaker Dennis Hastert.
This isn’t to say there aren’t good Republicans in Illinois, but as a political force the party is at best a shadow of what it once was, and many are wondering if things aren’t going to get worse before they get better.
When parties decline in influence and power, things often get worse because they are forced to recruit political neophytes to run in hopeless and even less than hopeless races. In Illinois, the main quality Republicans seem to be looking for in their candidates these days is a hefty personal bank account and a willingness to finance a campaign. > Read More
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What's This February 27, 2008
In Memoriam (David Keene)
The news of William F. Buckley Jr.’s death this morning saddened not just those conservatives who knew and worked with him, but everyone who came into contact with him over his 82 years.
Bill Buckley was there at the beginning. In fact, in many ways, he was the beginning of the modern conservative movement. His God and Man at Yale was the first real assault on the liberal secularist domination of American academia, and the founding of National Review in 1955 is the event from which all else flows. > Read More
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What's This February 21, 2008
McCain and the Times (David Keene)
The New York Times's attempt to link Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to a good-looking female lobbyist is but the latest sign that while he may have been a media favorite within the GOP, he’s now seen as the enemy by reporters, editors and their bosses rooting for a Democratic victory this fall.
The story was incredibly weak, but thick with hints of impropriety. One doesn’t have to be a McCainiac to recognize an essentially contrived hit piece when one appears. I’m no great fan of the senator, but he was right to hit back and hit back hard on this one.
Even more interesting was the Times’s decision to hold the story until after McCain had his nomination in the bag. If they assumed the story to be real, why wait until after New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida since what research and evidence they had for it was apparently complete by then? > Read More
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What's This February 14, 2008
McCain and the Right (David Keene)
A week or so ago, I got a call from a well-known supporter of Arizona Sen. John McCain (R), who urged me to hop aboard his bandwagon because “he will be the party’s nominee and you have to support him.” I found this an intriguing argument made on behalf of a candidate whose very persona has been built on an oft-expressed hostility to the very concept of “party loyalty.” I demurred, telling my caller that while there are strong arguments to be made that might convince a conservative who disagrees with much of what McCain has done and said over the years to support him now, an argument based on “party loyalty” is not one of them.
Until very recently, McCain and his closest supporters insisted that conservative voters have no problems with him, but that a few inside-the-Beltway conservatives and talk show types who don’t like him had created the illusion of a problem that didn’t, in fact, exist. In typical McCain fashion, his reaction to criticism was to deny that there was any reason for it and then attack the critics. > Read More
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What's This December 26, 2007
Christmas Present for Republicans (David Keene)
Republicans got an early Christmas present on Friday with the release of a new American Research Group poll showing incumbent Republican Sen. John Sununu (N.H.) leading former Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen in his quest for reelection next November.
The ARG poll, released over the weekend, shows Sununu leading Shaheen by 11 points and, more important, drawing support from more than 50 percent of those polled. The numbers: Sununu 52 … Shaheen 41 … 7 percent undecided. > Read More
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What's This December 21, 2007
The Straight Stuff (David Keene)
The experts have been both perplexed and amazed by the response to Rep. Ron Paul’s candidacy and his ability to raise bags of money from small contributors.
When Joe Trippi partnered with an obscure former Vermont governor four years ago and stimulated a successful Internet organizational and fundraising operation it was the story of the cycle, led to the spectacular rise and fall of Howard Dean and made Trippi something of a celebrity.
This time around, the folks around Ron Paul have built on the methodology Trippi first used so successfully and have achieved results for a very different sort of candidate that no one a year ago would have dreamed possible. In the introduction to a book he wrote after the Dean campaign crashed and burned, Trippi bragged that Dean’s Internet fundraising success enabled him on one occasion to raise $400,000 simply by sending out an e-mail. > Read More
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What's This December 20, 2007
The Flavor of the Month (David Keene)
Having just returned from Iowa, I can report that the state is as flat, cold and snow-covered as ever. It’s also filled with a lot of political junkies and just plain decent folks who are beginning to focus on the quadrennial role they will play in picking the next president of the United States.
By way of a disclaimer, I was out there supporting Mitt Romney, who I endorsed a couple of weeks ago.
I got there as former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s balloon was taking off and left as the air was steadily leaking from it. In fact, his lead of 15 or 20 points has already dropped to five or six and will probably drop a bit more before the caucuses meet. That makes Iowa on the Republican side a two-man race between Huckabee and Romney, with the others — from McCain to Thompson and Giuliani — hoping to pick up whatever crumbs these two might leave for them. > Read More
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What's This December 7, 2007
Evangelicals and Romney (David Keene)
Mitt Romney’s speech yesterday on the place of religious values in politics was, by most accounts, a political, intellectual and philosophical home run and its theme was one with which most Americans agree.
He had to deliver the speech, however, for reasons that go more to the ways in which the major media views people of faith than because of a realistic fear that his candidacy might be rejected by millions of religiously active voters for doctrinal reasons.
Many in the media believe that religious voters are, by their nature, narrow-minded and intolerant when, in fact, the opposite is usually the case. This is not to say that there aren’t some voters who might refuse to vote for Romney because he’s a Mormon, just as there are some who might reject Hillary because of her sex or Obama for racial reasons. But very few voters today are driven by such considerations. If these candidates lose, it won’t be because of their sex, race or religious beliefs but for other, more substantive and more legitimate, reasons. > Read More
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