It’s Wednesday, November 9th, 2011….and here’s The Gouge!
Leading off the mid-week edition, an intriguing bit of commentary from Dorothy Rabinowitz in the WSJ:
Why Gingrich Could Win
Herman Cain’s prospects were good until this week brought accusatory testimony from a woman who showed up in person, with detail.
Newt Gingrich’s rise in the polls—from near zero to the third slot in several polls—should come as no surprise to people who have been watching the Republican debates, now drawing television viewers as never before. The former speaker has stood out at these forums, the debater whose audiences seem to hang on his words and on a flow of thought rich in substance, a world apart from the usual that the political season brings.
“Substance” is too cold a word, perhaps, for the intense feeling that candidate Gingrich delivers so coolly in debates. Too cold too, no doubt, to describe the reactions of his listeners, visible on the faces of the crowds attending these forums—in their expressions, caught on C-SPAN’s cameras, in the speed with which their desultory politeness disappears once a Gingrich talk begins. Their disengagement—the tendency to look around the room, chat with their neighbors—vanishes. The room is on high alert.
The Gingrich effect showed dramatically at the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition forum last month—an occasion for which most of the candidates had, not surprisingly, prepared addresses focused on the importance of religion in their lives. Michele Bachmann told how, after struggle and indecision, she had found her way to God. So did Rick Perry. Rick Santorum provided a lengthy narrative on his personal commitment to the battle against partial-birth abortion—a history evidently from which no detail had been omitted. Ron Paul offered quotes from the Old and New Testaments where, it seems, he located support for his views on the dollar.
There were two exceptions to the lineup of speeches embracing religious themes. One was Herman Cain, who concentrated on the meaning of American freedom and admonished the crowd to stay informed, “because stupid people are running America.” The other was Mr. Gingrich. No one else’s remarks would ignite the huge response his talk did.
He began with the declaration that Americans were confronting the most important election choice since 1860. America would have the chance in 2012, Mr. Gingrich said, to repudiate decisively decades of leftward drift in our universities and colleges, our newsrooms, our judicial system and bureaucracies.
He would go on to detail the key policies he would put in place if elected, something other Republican candidates have done regularly to little effect. The Gingrich list was interrupted by thunderous applause at every turn. The difference was, as always, in the details—in the informed, scathing descriptions of the Obama policies to be dispatched and replaced, the convincing tone that suggested such a transformation was likely—even imminent.
Mr. Gingrich predicted, too, that late on Election Night—after it was clear that President Obama had been defeated along with the Democrats in the Senate—the recovery would begin, at once. His audience roared with pleasure. No other Republican candidate could have made the promise so persuasive.
Finally, Mr. Gingrich announced that as the Republican nominee he would challenge President Obama to seven Lincoln-Douglas-style debates. “I think I can represent American exceptionalism, free enterprise, the rights of private property and the Constitution, better than he can represent class warfare, bureaucratic socialism, weakness in foreign policy, and total confusion in the economy.” (For once, we believe Newt’s right!)
When it came time to answer questions from a panel of journalists, he was asked first about energy, one of those vital subjects that don’t tend to yield lively commentary. How would Mr. Gingrich’s policies differ from those of the current administration?
Mr. Gingrich launched into a lethal thumbnail description of the Obama administration’s energy policy. The president, he said, had gone to Brazil and told the Brazilians he was really glad they were drilling offshore and that he would like America to be their best customer. “The job of the American president,” Mr. Gingrich told the panel, “is not to be a purchasing agent for a foreign country—it’s to be a salesman for the United States of America.”
The former speaker of the House is a dab hand at drawing listeners in, for good reason—he showers them with details, facts and history in a degree no candidate in recent memory has even approached. Audiences have a way of rewarding such trust.
No one listening that night to candidate Gingrich’s reflections on the menace of radical judges from Lincoln’s time on down could have ignored the power of his fiery assessment—including the Dred Scott decision, others by courts today that threaten our national security, and much in between.
The Iowa contest ahead is all important for Mr. Gingrich. The same is truer still for Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum. Ms. Bachmann has been looking increasingly aware that her hopes are fading. Mr. Santorum now seems to inhabit a world so nearly exclusive in its focus on family and family values that it’s hard to imagine him a successful contender for the presidency of a large and varied nation of Americans with other concerns, the non-family kind included.
Then there’s Congressman Ron Paul, who last weekend let it be known that if he doesn’t like the views of the person who wins the nomination, he won’t support the Republican candidate. This is a good reason—one of many—for Mr. Paul to retire himself from further debates.It’s a certainty, to put it mildly, that he’s not going to be the nominee.
It would be passing strange to have as a candidate for the presidency of the United States an envenomed crank who regularly offers justification for the 9/11 attacks that resulted in the annihilation of 3,000 Americans. It was an act, Mr. Paul explains in these exculpatory sermonettes, to which the terrorists were driven by American policies. Mr. Paul may get all the fond buddy treatment in the world from his fellow debaters, but few Americans outside of his devoted army of isolationist fanatics will forget these views.
That leaves Mitt Romney, and Messrs. Perry, Cain and Gingrich heading the list of competitors for Iowa. Mr. Cain’s prospects were good until this week brought accusatory testimony from another woman—one who showed up in person, with plenty of detail. Charges of lies, financial motives and conspiracies notwithstanding, it’s hard to see how Mr. Cain weathers this disaster. No outsider can know what actually did or did not happen. But all the snorting in the world about Gloria Allred, the accuser’s attorney, isn’t going to change the impact of this highly specific accusation.
Whoever his competitors are in Iowa and beyond, Mr. Gingrich faces a hard fight for the nomination. His greatest asset lies in his capacity to speak to Americans as he has done, with such potency, during the Republican debates. No candidate in the field comes close to his talent for connection. There’s no underestimating the importance of such a power in the presidential election ahead, or any other one.
His rise in the polls suggests that more and more Republicans are absorbing that fact, along with the possibility that Mr. Gingrich’s qualifications all ’round could well make him the most formidable contender for the contest with Barack Obama.
And here, in his own words, are three reasons we’ll never support him:
Here’s the juice: Newt’s a legend in his own mind, possessed of an ego so large it dwarfs even The Obamao’s. And like B. Hussein, he believes himself so smart the rest of humanity is feeble-minded by comparison. His list of accomplishments is endless; give him a couple of days and he’ll tell you all about it: “I’m an historian”….”I founded this”….”I wrote this book/that book/those books”….”I’m an amateur paleontologist”….”I balanced the budget”….”I passed welfare reform”….etc., etc., etc. ad nauseum.
Yeah….he also:
(1). Has been married three times, having grabbed hold of vines 2 & 3 before letting go of 1 & 2 (blaming his infidelity on “how passionately I felt about this country”, and due his having “worked too hard”). Better yet, he was carrying on with the future 3rd-Mrs. Gingrich, 23 years his junior, at the same time he was leading the drive against Bill Clinton’s Oral Office shenanigans.
(2). Inexplicably mentioned to reporters during the infamous government shut-down a perceived “snub” by Clinton during a flight on Air Force One to attend Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral in Israel (Newt was evidently peeved Clinton had not invited him to discuss the looming budget crisis during the trip, and had also been instructed to use the aircraft’s rear exit!) was “part of why you ended up with us sending down a tougher continuing resolution” (resulting in Gingrich being lampooned, quite justifiably, for implying that the government shutdown was a result of his personal grievances).
Newt later called his comments the “single most avoidable mistake” he made as Speaker.
(3). Made the infamous and incredibly ill-advised global warming plug (He IS an amateur paleontologist!) with Nancy the Red (another “inexplicable” mistake”, at least according the Smartest-Man in whatever room he occupies).
(4). Resigned both his Speakership and House seat in the face of a determined grassroots revolt among the GOP rank-and-file. But Gingrich, once again demonstrating self-control is not among his virtues, could not go gently into that good night, instead commenting about his exti, “I’m willing to lead but I’m not willing to preside over people who are cannibals. My only fear would be that if I tried to stay, it would just overshadow whoever my successor is.”
Sorry; from where we sit, he’s every bit as big a flip-flopper as Mitt Romney….but far less stable….and with two more wives….and here we thought that was a Mormon thing!
Next up, two items from Commentary.com, courtesy of Jim Gleaves: first, John Podhoretz offers….
The Case for Optimism
“….We [Americans] fear we cannot make our way back, we doubt the resilience of our political system, and we have apprehensions about a future in which health-care entitlements will swallow our economy whole unless we change course. And when we think about what it will mean to change course, we are all discouraged. It can’t be done.
“….According to the International Monetary Fund, China will become the planet’s leading economy in the year 2016.
If the IMF is right, in five years’ time, the preeminent economic power on the planet will be a one-party state with a Communist Politburo and a largely peasant population, no genuine market, no human rights, no property rights, no rule of law, no freedom of speech, no freedom of the press, no freedom of association. It will mark the end of a two-century Anglophone dominance, and—even more civilizationally startling—for the first time in a half millennium the leading economic power will be a country that doesn’t even use the Roman alphabet.
Whether or not this preeminent China should dominate other nations, it certainly can. And it certainly will.
If you think like President Obama and believe nations are not defined by their differences, then China’s great leap forward is not that big a deal. But if you think, like someone who has given it a moment’s thought, that nations are defined by their differences, it is a very big deal. Most immediately, it means that the fellow elected next November will be the last president of the United States to preside over the world’s leading economy. This should be a source of shame to every American. It is not. Not yet. Instead, we battle over trivialities.”
As for Dennis Prager, he believes the glass holds a little water, but is mostly empty:
Optimistic or Pessimistic About America?
Commentary Magazine asked 41 Americans to respond to this question: “Are you optimistic or pessimistic about America’s future?” The responses, including my own, appear in the current issue of Commentary. As we were limited to 500 words, I offer my response here, in edited and longer form.
I am both optimistic and pessimistic regarding America’s future.
Here are my reasons for pessimism:
First, the unique American values system — what I call the American Trinity — is under assault. These three values are declared on every American coin: Liberty, “E Pluribus Unum” and “In God We Trust.”
The left has declared war on all three. And it is winning. It seeks to replace Liberty with egalitarianism, “E Pluribus Unum” with multiculturalism, and “In God We Trust” with a godless society. America is being transformed — candidate Barack Obama’s favorite word for what he sought to do to this country — into a Western European country, the left’s model of a great society.
Second, the primary purpose of high schools and colleges — and, increasingly, even elementary schools — has become turning students into leftists.
That’s one reason many of those who graduate from America’s schools know what the climate will be in 2080 but don’t know who Stalin was, let alone who Cain and Abel were. They are proficient at using condoms and at recycling but at little else. They have been taught nothing of American exceptionalism and would likely find the term incomprehensible, if not objectionable. And they would save their dog before a human they didn’t know because morality is a matter of feelings, and they feel more for their dog.
Third, the expansion of the state is producing a new American. This American believes in rights more than in obligations and thinks that the state should take care of him, his parents, his children and his neighbors.
Fourth, the melting pot of Americans has been replaced by a patchwork quilt of “Latinos,” “African-Americans” and other identity groups, all of whom, moreover, are taught to consider themselves victims of a sexist, racist, intolerant, Islamophobic and xenophobic society.
Fifth, half or more of the Jews and Christians who attend synagogue or church are more likely to be led by a priest, minister or rabbi who sermonizes not about their sins but about America’s.
Sixth, civilization’s single most important institution — marriage — is increasingly regarded as pointless and is being redefined for the first time in history to include members of the same sex. Why? Because the notions that marriage is sacred and that men and women are intrinsically different — a difference that carries unique significance — are depicted as patriarchal, anachronistic and sexist.
And seventh, most American Jews are on the wrong side of this American divide. They don’t understand that an America that abandons its unique values and becomes like other countries will join these other countries in abandoning Israel. And many, incredibly, do not even care.
With regard to the world, there are even more reasons for pessimism.
The Arab Spring is a product of Western liberals’ naivete. Russia is gradually resurrecting the Soviet Union. Iran would like to start a Middle East-wide war to annihilate Israel. Europe has lost its identity and its will to survive as a distinct civilization. The welfare state is finally collapsing, and Europeans do not do well with economic hardship. With America’s premature withdrawal, Iraq may well lapse into civil war and become a satellite of Iran. China is run by amoral men who hold vast reserves of the West’s currencies and who are intent on supplanting America as the world’s preeminent economic, political and military power.
So what are the reasons to be optimistic about America?
Many Americans are gaining clarity about the threat posed by leftism to core American values. They understand that the bigger the government, the smaller the citizen; that the death of God leads to the death of objective moral standards; and that the Marine Corps, not the Peace Corps, is the greatest force for world peace.
Many Americans are therefore fighting to reassert the primary American value of small government, the Judeo-Christian values upon which this country was founded and the idea that American exceptionalism is a moral category rather than a chauvinistic one. They’re also fighting to reassert the fact that a strong American military is the only guarantor of peace on earth, and they’re fighting against the racial and ethnic Balkanization of America.
If these Americans win the next presidential election, I will be optimistic about America.
Unfortunately, however (and I’m sorry for the “however”), at the very moment that the case against leftism would have the most receptive audience in modern American history, the only Republican candidate for president who seems to have a chance of defeating the Democratic president either doesn’t perceive the dangers of the left or doesn’t care to make the case against them.
Next up, as Thomas Sowell explains, the whole OWS thing is just a….
Numbers Games
One of the things that has struck me, when I have gone on luxury cruise ships, is that most of the passengers look like they are older than the captain — and luxury cruise ships don’t have juveniles as captains. The reason for the elderly clientele is fairly simple: Most people don’t reach the point when they can afford to travel on luxury cruise ships until they have worked their way up the income ladder over a long period of years.
The relationship between age and income is not hard to understand. It usually takes years to acquire the skills and experience that high-paying jobs require, or to build up a clientele for those in business or the professions.
But those in the media and in politics who are currently up in arms, denouncing income inequalities, seldom mention age as a factor in those inequalities.
The shrill rhetoric about differences in income proceeds as if they are talking about income inequalities between different classes of people. It would be hard to get the public all worked up over the fact that young people just starting out in their careers are not making nearly as much money as their parents or grandparents make.
Differences in wealth between the young and the old are even greater than differences in income. Households headed by someone 65 years old and older have more than 15 times as much wealth as households headed by someone under 35 years of age.
But these are not different classes of people, as so often insinuated in runaway political rhetoric. Everybody who is 65 years old was once under 35 years of age. And most people under 35 years of age will someday be 65 years old.
Differences in age are just one of the reasons why the insinuations about income and wealth that are thrown around in the media and in politics are often remote from reality. While the rhetoric is about people, the statistics are almost invariably about abstract income brackets.
It is easier and cheaper to collect statistics about income brackets than it is to follow actual flesh and blood people as they move massively from one income bracket to another over the years.More important, statistical studies that follow particular individuals over the years often reach diametrically opposite conclusions from the conclusions reached by statistical studies that follow income brackets over the years.
Currently we are hearing a lot in the media and in politics about the “top one percent” of income earners who are supposedly getting an ever-increasing share of the nation’s income. That is absolutely true if you are talking about income brackets. It is totally untrue if you are talking about actual flesh and blood people.
The Internal Revenue Service can follow individual people over the years because they can identify individuals from their Social Security numbers. During recent years, when “the top one percent” as an income category has been getting a growing share of the nation’s income, IRS data show that actual flesh and blood people who were in the top one percent in 1996 had their incomes go down — repeat, DOWN — by a whopping 26 percent by 2005.
How can both sets of statistics be true at the same time? Because most people who are in the top one percent in a given year do not stay in that bracket over the years.If we are being serious — as distinguished from being political — then our concern should be with what is happening to actual flesh and blood human beings, not what is happening to abstract income brackets.
There is the same statistical problem when talking about “the poor” as there is when talking about “the rich.” A University of Michigan study showed that most of the working people who were in the bottom 20 percent of income earners in 1975 were also in the top 40 percent at some point by 1991.Only 5 percent of those in the bottom quintile in 1975 were still there in 1991, while 29 percent of them were now in the top quintile.
People in the media and in politics choose statistics that seem to prove what they want to prove. But the rest of us should become aware of what games are being played with numbers.
On the Lighter Side….
Finally, we’ll wrap things up with News of the Bizarre, and the Hannibal Lechter Memorial “Oh, and Senator….just one more thing; LOVE your suit!” Award, courtesy of Bill Meisen and The Plain Dealer:
Election worker bites voter’s nose outside Cleveland polling place
A poll monitor working for the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, assaulted a voter at a polling place in Cleveland at midday Tuesday, sending the voter to a hospital. Cuyahoga County Board of Elections Director Jane Platten said the monitor, known as a “rover,” got into a dispute with a campaign worker over the legal distance campaign workers must be from the polling place door, which is 100 feet.
When the dispute at the Gloria Dei Evangelical Lutheran Church on Memphis Avenue seemed to be settled, the rover, James Williams of Cleveland, walked away. Then a nearby voter, Greg Flanagan, defending the campaign worker, mumbled, “You don’t have to be such an ass.” Williams overheard Flanagan, and according to him and others, Williams attacked. “He heard somebody say something,” said Platten. “He walks back and beats up the voter.”
Flanagan, 49, of Cleveland, said, “He head-butted me. He bit my nose. He tried to bite it off.” Andre Bell, the polling location coordinator, pulled Williams off Flanagan. Then, Bell said, Williams jumped into his car and drove off. Flanagan was taken to MetroHealth Medical Center, where he was treated for “human bite,” according to the hospital release form.
“I just came here to vote,” said Flanagan after his release from the hospital later in the afternoon.
Cleveland Councilman Kevin Kelley said police were looking for Williams. “We know who he is,” said Kelley. “He shouldn’t be hard to find.
Police released a photograph of Williams….
….and urged anyone coming in contact with him to avoid offering him fava beans with a nice chianti.
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