Herman Cain: America needs to learn how to take a joke
Issue #138
Stephen Combs in Sarasota, Florida
Fox News commentators, led by the cerebral, always insightful conservative Democrat Peter Johnson Jr., were congratulating the network for its outstanding performance in the Republican presidential debate last night in Ames, Iowa. The questioning was tough, they all agreed, putting to rest the claim by Fox competitors that the network is a patsy for the GOP.
The questioning was tough, in stark contrast to what someone like Bob Schieffer of CBS News, for example, would serve up in slow-pitch softball fashion to his Democrat pals. But some of it was petty and amateurish. Byron York of the Washington Examiner wanted to know if Michelle Bachmann is subservient to her husband. The young female reporter from the Examiner chirped her scripted questions with all the maturity of an 8th grader narrating the school variety show.
The big loser was Chris Wallace, whose Gotcha! interrogation style we have criticized in the past. Newt Gingrich even used the term last night when Wallace asked a
by-now shopworn question about Newt’s ability to lead given the mass exodus of
his campaign staff.
Earlier, moderator Bret Baier had asked the 8 candidates to can the spin and stick to
substance. “I took seriously Bret’s injunction to put aside the talking points,” Gingrich told Wallace, “and I wish you would put aside the gotcha questions. I intend to run on ideas.”
The fiery exchange was one of the evening’s highlights, and it served to show how the
Republican field is becoming feisty and energized. As more than one commentator
observed afterwards, the more they do this, the better they get.
Wallace, in rebuttal: “You have to be responsible.”
Gingrich: “There’s too much attention paid by the press corps to the campaign minutiae”
and too little attention “to the basic ideas that distinguish us from Barack
Obama.”
Except for his participation in a brief round of questions that followed, Wallace was not
heard from the rest of the evening. He, you remember, asked Michelle Bachmann a few weeks ago if she were a flake, an attempt to belittle her that backfired and forced him to apologize.
Self-styled analysts picked the winners, but it was high-tech pollster Frank Luntz who named Romney and Gingrich the big winners. Our take is this: Except for the obvious two losers, Ron Paul, a crackpot, and Jon Huntsman, a liberal, any of the six other Republican candidates would make a more competent President than the one we have now. Any of them would run Barack Obama through the shredder and leave him in a bloody heap in debates.
And the leftist media know this. It was fascinating to watch their reactions, from the predictably furious Lawrence O’Donnell Thursday night to the lefty-libs on Morning Joe Friday morning. Whom they attack they fear the most: Rick Perry (not even there),
Sarah Palin (not even there) and Michelle Bachman.
Ron Paul’s Gerald Ford moment
Congressman Paul drew applause from his vocal libertarian supporters with his claim that Iran is not a threat to Israel or the rest of the Middle East. It was Dr. Paul’s Gerald Ford moment (when Ford claimed in a 1976 debate with Jimmy Carter that Poland was not
under Soviet control). That pretty much finished off President Ford. Let’s hope we’ve heard the last from Ron Paul. But we doubt it.
Media yawn at GOP hold on Wisconsin Senate
It’s a good bet that most of the country views the Wisconsin Senate recall elections as transient, marginally amusing entertainment, a soap opera quickly to be forgotten in a world concerned with the more weighty matters of Hollywood and criminal celebrity. If we want to know something about politics we will consult our country’s eminent scholars – Bill Maher, Katie Couric, Rachel Maddow. If we want to understand the economics of U.S.
healthcare, we will turn to Canada’s Nobel Prize-winning economist, Justin Bieber. If we need advice on child-rearing, let’s query Casey Anthony. If we want . . . well, you get the
picture.
For those just tuning in, here are the facts: In the Aug. 9 election six Republican incumbents faced recall. Democrats needed to defeat three of them to re-take control of the Senate. They won only two, and Republicans retain control. Next Tuesday three Democrats face recall, and if Republicans win two of those, the balance of power goes right back to where it was, 19 Republicans and 14 Democrats.
While ordinary Americans might have to think for a minute about why these elections
are important, the special interest pressure groups that financed them had no such uncertainty. The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign reported that all but $5.1 million of the $33 million spent on the campaign came from outside Wisconsin. The leader was a coalition of unions that spent $9.8 million trying to unseat the six Republican Senators.
The leftists who engineered the insurrection are reliable Democrat Party satellites: teacher and public employee unions mobs, for the most part. Their complaint was straightforward: Governor Scott Walker and Republicans in the legislature did what they promised to do – cut spending, curb the union chokehold on state finances and balance the budget. Intolerable Acts, the statists bellowed.
The outcome was so disappointing to Democrats and their media friends that ABC News ignored the story, the Media Research Center reported.
If Wisconsin wants to runs its affairs this way, it stands on firm legal ground under the 10th Amendment to the Constitution. But as the nation has witnessed in Wisconsin beginning in January when union mobs and other leftists took over and trashed the Statehouse, recall-at-will laws can foment near-anarchy. The mayhem in Wisconsin is the chaotic
result.
It’s a little puzzling to this outsider that rational voters would seek to add more members of a cowardly delegation – all 14 Democrat senators – that fled the state to prevent a quorum from voting on a lawful bill.
Lawmakers are elected to terms, and only chaos can be the end product of a system where
single-issue zealots can bring on mid-term termination. At the federal level, we allow profoundly incompetent Presidents like Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama to finish their terms, even at great cost to the nation. If recall had been an option in 1982, President Reagan would never have completed his first term.
The recall of a state lawmaker who displeases those who fancy themselves as kingmakers mocks the rule of law – as well as order and civility. If Wisconsin voters – not special interest groups affiliated with the Democrat Party – want to give control of their Senate back to the Democrats, let them win the next election.
Matt Seaholm is state director of the Wisconsin chapter of Americans for Prosperity, a group that supported the Republicans. If Democrats had prevailed, he told the
Christian Science Monitor, “They’ll be looking to recall the governor and put Wisconsin into a further perpetual election cycle, instead of letting elected officials govern.”
