headlines from around the world

An amazing collection of headlines from around the world.

president-elect barack hussein obama

[click to enlarge]

eisenhower, nixon, goldwater & reagan for obama

Dwight Eisenhower’s granddaughter, Susan Eisenhower.

Richard Nixon’s daughter, Julie Nixon:

Barry Goldwater’s granddaughter, CC Goldwater.

Ronald Reagan’s son, Ron Reagan.

prankin' palin

A comedy duo out of Montreal pull off a prank call to Sarah Palin (h/t Daily Kos). Hilarious. (I especially love the reference to Nailin’ Paylin (sic).)

obama's harvard law days

When I was in law school, the most conservative and most partisan Republican professor was Charles Fried, who went on to become Solicitor General under Ronald Reagan. From The New Republic:

Reagan Appointee and (Recent) McCain Adviser Charles Fried Supports Obama

Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School, has long been one of the most important conservative thinkers in the United States. Under President Reagan, he served, with great distinction, as Solicitor General of the United States. Since then, he has been prominently associated with several Republican leaders and candidates, most recently John McCain, for whom he expressed his enthusiastic support in January.

This week, Fried announced that he has voted for Obama-Biden by absentee ballot. In his letter to Trevor Potter, the General Counsel to the McCain-Palin campaign, he asked that his name be removed from the several campaign-related committees on which he serves. In that letter, he said that chief among the reasons for his decision "is the choice of Sarah Palin at a time of deep national crisis."

Fried is exceptionally thoughtful and principled; his vote for Obama is especially
noteworthy.

--Cass. R. Sunstein

UPDATE: Fried writes to TNR: I admire Senator McCain and was glad to help in his campaign, and to be listed as doing so; but when I concluded that I must vote for Obama for the reason stated in my letter, I felt it wrong to appear to be recommending to others a vote that I was not prepared to cast myself. So it was more of an erasure than a public affirmation--although obviously my vote meant that I thought that Obama was preferable to McCain-Palin. I do not consider abstention a proper option.

For anyone still worried that Obama is some kind of radical Manchurian Muslim Marxist, it is worth look at his performance as president of the Harvard Law Review. Bradford Berenson was the #2 lawyer in George W. Bush’s White House and he was on the Harvard Law Review with Obama. From Frontline (“Harvard Law Days”):

Bradford Berenson Harvard Law, class of '91; associate White House counsel, 2001-'03

The law school generally at that time was riven ideologically, and not just in terms of Republican/Democrat partisan politics, but there were contending schools of legal thought at the time, represented on the faculty, that really polarized both the faculty and the student body. There was a far-left group of professors who adhered to what was known as critical legal studies, and then there were a handful of conservative
professors, like Charles Fried, who had served in the Reagan administration. There were intense debates over affirmative action and race issues. This is, after all, just a few years after the end of the Reagan presidency. ...

That doesn't mean that, day to day, people weren't friendly to one another, but the
classroom was very politicized. The debates and discussions of the law and of cases frequently pit conservatives in our class against liberals in our class, and the discussions often got quite heated. I would say the environment at Harvard Law School back then was political in a borderline unhealthy way. It was quite intense.

... Interestingly, race was at the forefront of the agenda. There were intense debates over affirmative action that sometimes got expressed through fights over tenure decisions relating to junior faculty at the law school. There were women professors and minority professors who either had come up for tenure or were coming up for tenure, and there were big fights, on the faculty and in the law school at large, over whether they should receive tenure, whether the quality of their scholarship merited that. ...

[A]fter [Obama] became president of the Review, he was under a lot of pressure to participate and lend his voice to those debates. And he did, I think, to some degree. But I would not have described him as a campus radical or a campus political leader.
He was the president of the Harvard Law Review, the leader of that organization.
But, in that role, his job was to manage, in essence, a publication, and the editors who brought it forth and to do a lot of close editing of academic legal articles. …

You don't become president of the Harvard Law Review, no matter how political, or how liberal the place is, by virtue of affirmative action, or by virtue of not being at the very top of your class in terms of legal ability. Barack was at the very top of his class in terms of legal ability. He had a first-class legal mind and, in my view, was selected to be president of the Review entirely on his merits.

... I never regarded him as kind of a racial special pleader, or a person looking for race-based benefits, either for himself or others. I think as a policy matter, he supported affirmative action and believed in the arguments for it. But unlike many people on the left, he was also willing to acknowledge that it had costs, and he could at least appreciate the arguments on the other side. ...

Q: Just in a political sense, what kind of a person were you looking for [to serve as president]? ...

The block of conservatives on the Law Review my year I think was eager to avoid having any of the most political people on the left govern the Review. I mean, the first bedrock criterion, I think for almost all of the editors, was to have somebody
with an absolutely first-rate legal mind who would be able to engage competently
with the nation's top legal scholars on their scholarship and on these articles, and who would provide the intellectual leadership for the Review that it always needed. That was non-negotiable for almost everybody right or left.

But there were a number of people that would have met that criterion. There were at least a large handful who probably had the intellectual and personal characteristics to be good leaders of the Review. From among those, the conservatives were eager
to have somebody who would treat them fairly, who would listen to what they had
to say, who would not abuse the powers of the office to favor his ideological soul mates and punish those who had different views. Somebody who would basically play it straight, I think was really what we were looking for.

Q: Was that hard to find?

It was very hard to find. And ultimately, the conservatives on the Review supported Barack as president in the final rounds of balloting because he fit that bill far better than the other people who were running. ...

We had all worked with him over the course of a year. And we had all spent countless hours in the presence of Barack, as well as others of our colleagues who were running, in Gannett House [the Law Review offices], and so you get a pretty good sense of people over the course of a year of late nights working on the Review. You know who the rabble-rousers are. You know who the people are who are blinded by their politics. And you know who the people are who, despite their politics, can reach across and be friendly to and make friends with folks who have different views. And Barack very much fell into the latter category. ...

[After Obama is selected,] he does a very able job as president. Puts out what I think was a very good volume of the Review. Does a great job managing the difficult and complicated interpersonal dynamics on the Review. And manages somehow, in an extremely fractious group, to keep everybody almost happy.

Q: Some of the people who are not as happy as others, I think much to their surprise, are some of the African American people who believe that now it's their turn.

Absolutely right, absolutely right. I think Barack took 10 times as much grief from those on the left on the Review as from those of us on the right. And the reason was, I think there was an expectation among those editors on the left that he would affirmatively use the modest powers of his position to advance the cause, whatever that was. They thought, you know, finally there's an African American president of the Harvard Law Review; it's our turn, and he should aggressively use this position, and his authority and his bully pulpit to advance the political or philosophical causes that we all believe in.

And Barack was reluctant to do that. It's not that he was out of sympathy with their views, but his first and foremost goal, it always seemed to me, was to put out a first-rate publication. And he was not going to let politics or ideology get in the way of doing that. ...

He had some discretion as president to exercise an element of choice for certain of the positions on the masthead; it wasn't wide discretion, but he had some. And I think a lot of the minority editors on the Review expected him to use that discretion to the maximum extent possible to empower them. To put them in leadership positions, to burnish their resumes, and to give them a chance to help him and help guide the Review. He didn't do that. He declined to exercise that discretion to disrupt the results of votes or of tests that were taken by various people to assess their fitness for leadership positions.

He was unwilling to undermine, based on the way I viewed it, meritocratic outcomes or democratic outcomes in order to advance a racial agenda. That earned him a lot of recrimination and criticism from some on the left, particularly some of the minority editors of the Review. ...

It confirmed the hope that I and others had had at the time of the election that he would basically be an honest broker, that he would not let ideology or politics blind him to the enduring institutional interests of the Review. It told me that he valued the success of his own presidency of the Review above scoring political points of currying favor with his political supporters.

And here is a bit about how Obama got his job at the University of Chicago Law School. It was initiated by the recommendation of one of the most conservative federal appeals court judges in the country, Michael McConnell, who was on Bush’s short list for the Supreme Court:

Janny Scott The New York Times

Apparently, while he was an editor of the Law Review, he was involved in the editing of a piece by Michael McConnell, who was a conservative constitutional law scholar who later was appointed by President George W. Bush to the Federal Court and was considered as a Supreme Court nominee, or was one of the people listed around the time of [Justice Samuel] Alito and [Chief Justice John] Roberts' appointments.

According to a professor at the University of Chicago, Douglas Baird, he got a call, or got a note, from Michael McConnell, who ... was definitely an alumnus of the University of Chicago Law School, saying, "I encountered this really remarkable, brilliant guy at Harvard Law Review when they were working on my piece, and you should have this guy on your radar." And so it was this very conservative legal scholar who brought Obama to the attention of the University of Chicago.

So Douglas Baird called Obama up at Harvard Law School -- I guess it must have been in his last year -- and said, "Do you have any interest in teaching?" Because, Baird said to me, "We rarely get that kind of unqualified endorsement, particularly from someone as well-known and respected as McConnell." ...

And Obama said, "Well, no, actually. What I want to do is write this book." This was at the moment where the newspaper articles and everything about his election had attracted the interest of publishers, and he'd gotten a book contract. So his first contact at the University of Chicago, which was where he later ended up teaching, was an attempt to just bring that guy there, since he was thought to be so sharp and
worth following.

disgraceful

An eight to ten hour line of primarily African-American voters in Atlanta yesterday.

Think this could have something to do with it?




And you thought the battles to enfranchise African-American voters were won in the ‘60’s? Let’s see the hours-long lines in the white suburbs and small towns.

don't get cocky

I love the Obama campaign.

The latest video:

for your wavering republican friends

If you are like me, you probably have a number of lapsed Republican or independent friends who are seriously considering voting for Obama this time around. But as an Obama win becomes more likely, the flood of fear and smear from the paranoid right to which they are subjected becomes even more crazy and overwhelming than usual. The amount of whacko stuff on Obama that is being forwarded to me these days is truly astonishing – and it’s increasingly unhinged. I have been trying to refute much of it (is critical thinking no longer taught in schools?), but I could spend all day trying to refute it all point-by-point. So I have had to resort to some variation of this: Who do you trust, Colin Powell and Warren Buffett (who are supporting Obama) or some crazy email whose source is unknown to you (that says Obama is a terrorist-loving radical Muslim Marxist who was actually born in Kenya and Indonesia and is really Arab)?

To save you some effort, you can just forward along this:

The centerpiece of the McCain/Palin attacks on Obama these days is that he is a “socialist” who will raise taxes. Although he will lower taxes for 95% of Americans (unfortunately, in my view, since we are likely to face a trillion dollar federal budget deficit next year), it is true that he is proposing smaller deficits than McCain by raising some taxes on the wealthiest Americans. However, even those tax increases would still have no one paying higher federal taxes than they did under Clinton – and those were pretty good years for the economy.

Take the capital gains tax, which seems to be a Republican obsession (understandably, since it is relatively easy to convert most investment income into capital gains). A bit of history: In the Tax Reform Act of 1986, St. Reagan RAISED the capital gains tax to 28% where it stood for ten years until it was lowered to 20% in 1997. As you might recall, the decade from 1987 to 1997 was generally a good one for the economy – at least better than the subsequent decade. The capital gains tax was further lowered to 15% in 2003. Obama proposes to raise the capital gains tax back up to 20% for those making more than $250,000 – where it stood from 1997 to 2003 and significantly LOWER than the rate St. Reagan left us with. (Here is a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Obama economic advisors Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee outlining Obama’s tax plans.)

Although Obama doesn’t propose to raise taxes fully to the levels that prevailed under Clinton, nonetheless we are being told they would destroy the economy and lead to “socialism.” OK, let’s take the extreme case. Let’s assume the tax rates that prevailed under Clinton. How did the economy do under Clinton? Let’s look at capital gains.

Forget the tax rates, did you even HAVE any capital gains?

The Dow Jones Industrial Average went up from 3253 to 10,587 under Clinton (325%). As of yesterday’s close, it has gone DOWN to 8175 under Bush (-22.8%).

The S&P 500 went up from 447 to 1342 under Clinton (300%). It has gone DOWN to 848 under Bush (-36.8%).

The NASDAQ went up from 700 to 2770 under Clinton (395%). It has gone DOWN to 1505 under Bush (-46.7%)

Let’s take the broadest measure of the market, the S&P 500: Would you rather pay a 20% tax on a gain of 300% or enjoy the benefit of a lower 15% tax rate on a … LOSS of 46%?

Staying with the economy, who would you most trust for advice on which candidate would be best for the economy? Of anyone in the country. My pick is easy: Warren Buffett. He is unquestionably the world’s greatest investor. His integrity and objectivity are beyond question. He has already committed to giving his vast wealth to the Gates Foundation (without even his name on some venerable institution as his legacy). He lives relatively simply in Omaha. He financial counsel is conservative, common-sense and practical. And has for years been warning against exactly the dangers that have brought our financial system to its knees.

Warren Buffett is supporting Obama. And Obama regularly seeks his counsel.

Who else might have credibility? How about the guy who broke the back of double-digit inflation during the Reagan years? That would be Paul Volcker, Fed chief from 1979 to 1987.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Volcker has emerged as a top economic adviser to Sen. Barack Obama during a presidential campaign dominated by a global financial crisis. Their growing bond is paying dividends for each man.

Mr. Volcker delivers gravitas and credibility to Sen. Obama, people in the Obama camp say, as well as ideas and approaches to the economic crisis. "Volcker whispering in Obama's ear will make even Republicans comfortable, because he's a hero of the right and a supporter of a strong dollar," says John Tamny, a supply-side economist and Republican.

… Mr. Volcker is just as well known for taming the runaway inflation of that era. His stock has risen in recent months as his gruff warnings about the risks of deregulating the financial sector have come to look prescient. His successor's reputation, meanwhile, has come under a cloud. Alan Greenspan is under criticism that the low interest rates and deregulatory ideology of his tenure contributed to today's crisis.

With nearly every day presenting a fresh financial emergency, Sen. Obama has persuaded Mr. Volcker, who travels the globe for economic meetings and occasionally disappears on fly-fishing trips, to be at the ready; Mr. Volcker now keeps a cellphone on him at all times. And though he still doesn't own a computer (his assistant prints out emails for him), he's gotten used to Sen. Obama's rapid-fire messages sent from a BlackBerry device.

The Obama-Volcker relationship continues to evolve, campaign advisers say. At the start, Sen. Obama sought advice from Mr. Volcker and other outside voices through his economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, a 39-year-old University of Chicago professor. But starting with the demise of Bear Stearns Cos. in March and continuing today, Sen. Obama speaks directly and often with Mr. Volcker about the intricacies of the financial crisis and possible solutions. They've become "collaborators," as one aide puts it.

For example, when the U.S. Treasury put forth a plan to set up a $700 billion rescue fund to buy up toxic assets, Sen. Obama quickly backed it on the advice of Mr. Volcker. Like other prominent economists, Mr. Volcker also advocated early on for the recapitalization of banks. On this advice, Sen. Obama proposed direct equity infusions in banks in his frequent conference calls with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. The idea, initially rejected by Mr. Paulson, was finally proposed last week by the administration, in an effort to get banks lending again to businesses and each other.

Sen. Obama's team of economic advisers includes two former Treasury secretaries, Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, and in some decisions, Mr. Volcker doesn't reign supreme. The candidate's latest proposal, for example, a $60 billion stimulus package, was initially fought by the former Fed chief on the grounds that Americans were already overspending. Moreover, he is unlikely to take a long-term role in any Obama administration.

… But for now, and going into the campaign's final weeks, aides say Sen. Obama is increasingly relying on Mr. Volcker. His staff now routinely reviews policy proposals and speeches with Mr. Volcker. Conference calls and face-to-face meetings of the Obama economic team are often reorganized to accommodate his schedule. When the team discusses the financial crisis, "The most important question to Obama: What does Paul Volcker think?" says Jason Furman, the campaign's economic-policy director.

The two men have developed an ease with each other, say aides, even as their styles appear to differ: Sen. Obama, who tends to use the Socratic method from his law-school training, examines all points of view and debates them. With a more formal and direct demeanor, Mr. Volcker likes to go straight to solutions.

In last week's final presidential debate, after Republican John McCain raised questions about his rival's ties, Sen. Obama said, "Let me tell you who I associate with. On economic policy, I associate with Warren Buffett and former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker...who have shaped my ideas and who will be surrounding me in the White House."

Some Democrats have speculated that, if elected, Sen. Obama could name Mr. Volcker to a post, possibly even as Treasury secretary, for a limited time. Banking and Wall Street executives are pushing the two campaigns to name a new secretary shortly after the election to reassure markets during the transition. The Obama campaign wouldn't comment on possible appointments. "I just want to be helpful, because I believe Sen. Obama -- in his person, in his ideas and in his ability to understand and articulate both our needs and our hopes -- brings the strong and fresh leadership we need," Mr. Volcker said in an interview in New York. Mr. Volcker wouldn't provide details of his policy suggestions or his personal relationship with Sen. Obama. …

Starting in late summer 2007, Mr. Goolsbee had regular discussions with Mr. Volcker. He incorporated Mr. Volcker's ideas, including his early concern that the housing downturn would snowball into a larger financial crisis, into Sen. Obama's policy positions. In a September 2007 speech at Nasdaq, Sen. Obama predicted that because of oversight lapses and abusive practices that cause the public to doubt financial results, "the markets will be ravaged by a crisis in confidence."

In early January 2008, when Sen. Clinton was pounding her rival over his lack of experience and stature, Sen. Obama phoned Mr. Volcker to ask for his endorsement. … Mr. Volcker, a long-time Democrat who had mostly stayed out of partisan politics, agreed, and wrote out his statement in longhand.

The presidential candidate's first big economic address took place in March at Cooper Union in New York. Mr. Volcker's fingerprints were evident in the speech. The onetime central banker had long been vigilant about strong regulatory oversight; as Fed chairman he rejected big banks' attempts to repeal Depression-era laws to engage in more risky practices like investment banking. New financial institutions and instruments have since led to the repeal or relaxation of those laws, and Mr. Volcker told Sen. Obama that the
U.S. regulatory structure must be strengthened and updated for the 21st century.

With Mr. Volcker sitting in the front row, Sen. Obama told the audience at Cooper Union that the current financial-regulatory framework must be "revamped." He faulted deregulation for the growing economic
crisis. "Our free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it."

… In the past two months, financial crises have come one after another, picking up speed with the federal government's July effort to bolster big mortgage insurers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. As the contagion from the subprime mortgages and risky mortgage credit swaps threatened to topple other institutions, Sen. Obama asked for "emergency meetings" with his economic team, about a dozen advisers including Mr. Volcker and Mr. Buffett.

At the first group meeting in Washington in late July, Sen. Obama said he wanted to hear from each adviser on the worsening economic downturn and asked Mr. Volcker to go first. "The very health of the credit markets is at stake," Mr. Volcker said, according to one attendee. He urged strong action to restore confidence, particularly in the U.S. banking system. …

Ask yourself this: Who would you rather have advising the next president of the United States, Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan (McCain’s economic heroes – both of whom pushed for deregulation of financial markets) or Warren Buffett and Paul Volcker (both of whom warned against it)?

Let’s turn to foreign policy.

Who is the most (the only?) credible remaining Republican voice on national security and foreign policy and the most trusted by political independents? That would probably be Colin Powell. Many of us lost respect for him when he failed his greatest test, publicly supporting Bush’s policies despite personal doubts. But at least he was a voice of reason within the Bush administration. He was outmaneuvered by Cheney and Rumsfeld and eventually forced out. And he has now at least partially redeemed himself with his endorsement of Obama.

Powell is a decades-long friend of McCain’s and even donated to McCain's campaign last year. Powell’s endorsement of Obama on Meet the Press is one of the best, most-thoughtful ones out there. (I particularly admire his defense of Muslim-Americans – a rare thing among any public figure these days.) I encourage you to watch or read it (it’s not too long and very much worth watching):

Here is the video:



The transcript is here.

There are simply too many great observations to quote. Watch or read the whole thing.


If Warren Buffett, Paul Volcker and Colin Powell aren’t enough, here are a few others:

Former Republican Senator Larry Pressler (R-SD) has come out for Obama:

Pressler, who said that in addition to casting an absentee ballot for Obama he'd donated $500 to the Illinois senator's campaign, cited the Democrat's response to the financial crisis as the primary reason for his decision.

"I just got the feeling that Obama will be able to handle this financial crisis better, and I like his financial team of [former Treasury Secretary Robert] Rubin and [former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul] Volcker better," he said. By contrast, John McCain's "handling of the financial crisis made me feel nervous."

I find the Pressler endorsement particularly surprising – a former Republican Senate colleague of McCain’s. For Pressler, like Powell who is a long-time friend of McCain’s, that must have been particularly tough. What would have driven him to make it public?

(Maybe he feels, as Senator Thad Cochran (R-Miss) said, “The thought of [McCain] being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me.”)

Then there is Ken Adelman. His views mean nothing to me. He is the one who famously predicted that the Iraq war would be a “cakewalk.” (I always thought there was a certain contradiction between the claims that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the US while also militarily being a “cakewalk” to defeat. Of course, we invaded and occupied Iraq precisely because it was an easy military target – serving potentially as a very large aircraft carrier from which the US could dominate the Middle East – not because it was a threat to us.) I don’t know why Adelman is even taken seriously anymore. But, as George Packer recounts on his blog at The New Yorker, he has solid Republican credentials. And he is supporting Obama:

First Colin Powell, Now…

Ken Adelman is a lifelong conservative Republican. Campaigned for Goldwater, was hired by Rumsfeld at the Office of Economic Opportunity under Nixon, was assistant to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld under Ford, served as Reagan’s director of arms control, and joined the Defense Policy Board for Rumsfeld’s second go-round at the Pentagon, in 2001. Adelman’s friendship with Rumsfeld, Cheney, and their wives goes back to the sixties, and he introduced Cheney to Paul Wolfowitz at a Washington brunch the day Reagan was sworn in.

In recent years, Adelman and his friends Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz fell out over his criticisms of the botching of the Iraq War. Still, he remains a bona-fide hawk (“not really a neo-con but a con-con”) who has never supported a Democrat for President in his life. Two weeks from now that’s going to change: Ken Adelman intends to vote for Barack Obama. He can hardly believe it himself.

Adelman and I exchanged e-mails today about his decision. He asked rhetorically,

Why so, since my views align a lot more with McCain’s than with Obama’s? And since I truly dread the notion of a Democratic president, Democratic House, and hugely Democratic Senate?

Primarily for two reasons, those of temperament and of judgment.

When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird. Having worked with Ronald Reagan for seven years, and been with him in his critical three summits with Gorbachev, I’ve concluded that that’s no way a president can act under pressure.

Second is judgment. The most important decision John McCain made in his long campaign was deciding on a running mate.

That decision showed appalling lack of judgment. Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office—I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency. But that selection contradicted McCain’s main two, and best two, themes for his campaign—Country First, and experience counts. Neither can he credibly claim, post-Palin pick. …

And then there is Christopher Buckley (author of the brilliant “Thank You For Smoking” and other novels and son of conservative legend William F. Buckley). He endorsed Obama in a blog post entitled, “Sorry Dad, I’m Voting for Obama”. I won’t post it all. But here is a bit:

Obama has in him—I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy “We are the people we have been waiting for” silly rhetoric—the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.

So, I wish him all the best. We are all in this together. Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship. And so, for the first time in my life, I’ll be pulling the Democratic lever in November. As the saying goes, God save the United States of America.

For this sin, by the way, Buckley was essentially fired from the National Review that his father founded. (File under: Death of the Modern Conservative Movement.) I have the feeling his father would not have been able to pull the lever for a McCain/Palin ticket, either.


I could go on. But this, at least, should be enough to reassure your wavering Republican friends that Obama is not a terrorist-loving radical Muslim Marxist.

It’s OK to vote for him. You’re in good company.

three videos

One serious:

Ronald Reagan endorses Obama



Two funny:

Saturday Night Live: Bush Endorses McCain



The Vet Who Didn’t Vet

couldn't happen to a better bunch

Obama is going to win in a landslide, and hateful Republicans are going to devour each other in recrimination.

Or, at least, one can hope.

From UK’s Telegraph:

Republican fears of historic Obama landslide unleash civil war for the future of the party

Senior Republicans believe that John McCain is doomed to a landslide defeat which will hand Barack Obama more political power than any president in a generation.

By Tim Shipman in Durango,
Colorado 26 Oct 2008

Aides to George W.Bush, former Reagan White House staff and friends of John McCain have all told The Sunday Telegraph that they not only expect to lose on November 4, but also believe that Mr Obama is poised to win a crushing mandate.

They believe he will be powerful enough to remake the American political landscape with even more ease than Ronald Reagan did in 1980.

The prospect of an electoral rout has unleashed a bitter bout of recriminations both within the McCain campaign and the wider conservative movement, over who is to blame and what should be done to salvage the party's future.

Mr McCain is now facing calls for him to sacrifice his own dwindling White House hopes and focus on saving vulnerable Republican Senate seats which are up for grabs on the same day.

Their fear is that Democrat candidates riding on Mr Obama's popularity may win the nine extra seats they need in the Senate to give them unfettered power in Congress.

If the Democrat majority in the Senate is big enough - at least 60 seats to 40 - the Republicans will be unable to block legislation by use of a traditional filibuster - talking until legislation runs out of time. No president has had the support of such a
majority since Jimmy Carter won the 1976 election. President Reagan achieved his
political transformation partly through the power of his personality.

David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, told The Sunday Telegraph that Republicans should now concentrate all their fire on "the need for balanced
government".

"It's hard to see a turnaround in the White House race," he said. "This could look like an ideological as well as a party victory if we're not careful. It could be 1980 in reverse.

"With this huge new role for federal government in the economy, the possibility for mischief making is very, very great. One man should not have a monopoly of political and financial power. That's very dangerous."

In North Carolina, where Senator Elizabeth Dole seems set to loose, Republicans are running adverts that appear to take an Obama victory for granted, warning that the Democrat will have a "blank cheque" if her rival Kay Hagen wins. "These liberals want complete control of government in a time of crisis," the narrator says. "All branches of Government. No checks and balances."

Democrats lead in eight of the 12 competitive Senate races and need just nine gains to reach their target of 60. Even Mitch McConnell, the leader of Senate Republicans, is at risk in Kentucky, normally a rock solid red state.

A private memo on the likely result of the congressional elections, leaked to Politico, has the Republicans losing 37 seats.

Ed Rollins, who masterminded Ronald Reagan's second victory in 1984, said the election is already over and predicted: "This is going to turn into a landslide."

A former White House official who still advises President Bush told The Sunday
Telegraph: "McCain hasn't won independents, nor has he inspired the base. It's
the worst of all worlds. He is dragging everyone else down with him. He needs to
deploy people and money to salvage what we can in Congress."

The prospect of defeat has unleashed what insiders describe as an "every man for himself" culture within the McCain campaign, with aides in a "circular firing squad" as blame is assigned. …

Mr Frum argues that just as America is changing, so the Republican Party must adapt its economic message and find more to say about healthcare and the environment if it is to survive.

He said: "I don't know that there's a lot of realism in the Republican Party. We have an economic message that is largely irrelevant to most people.

"Cutting personal tax rates is not the answer to everything. The Bush years were largely prosperous but while national income was up the numbers for most individuals were not. Republicans find that a hard fact to process."

Other Republicans have jumped ship completely. Ken Adelman, a Pentagon adviser on the Iraq war, Matthew Dowd, who was Mr Bush's chief re-election strategist, and Scott McClellan, Mr Bush's former press secretary, have all endorsed Mr Obama.

But the real bile has been saved for those conservatives who have balked at the selection of Sarah Palin.

In addition to Mr Frum, who thinks her not ready to be president, Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan's greatest speechwriter and a columnist with the Wall Street Journal, condemned Mr McCain's running mate as a "symptom and expression of a new vulgarisation of American politics." Conservative columnist David Brooks called her a "fatal cancer to the Republican Party".

The backlash that ensued last week revealed the fault lines of the coming civil
war.

Rush Limbaugh, the doyen of right wing talk radio hosts, denounced Noonan, Brooks and Frum. Neconservative writer Charles Krauthammer condemned "the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama", while fellow columnist Tony Blankley said that instead of collaborating in heralding Mr Obama's arrival they should be fighting "in a struggle to the political death for the soul of the country".

During the primaries the Democratic Party was bitterly divided between Barack Obama's "latte liberals" and Hillary Clinton's heartland supporters, but now the same cultural division threatens to tear the Republican Party apart.

Jim Nuzzo, a White House aide to the first President Bush, dismissed Mrs Palin's critics as "cocktail party conservatives" who "give aid and comfort to the enemy".

He told The Sunday Telegraph: "There's going to be a bloodbath. A lot of people are going to be excommunicated. David Brooks and David Frum and Peggy Noonan are dead people in the Republican Party. The litmus test will be: where did you stand on Palin?"

Mr Frum thinks that Mrs Palin's brand of cultural conservatism appeals only to a dwindling number of voters.

He said: "She emerges from this election as the probable frontrunner for the 2012 nomination. Her supporters vastly outnumber her critics. But it will be extremely difficult for her to win the presidency."

Mr Nuzzo, who believes this election is not a re-run of the 1980 Reagan revolution but of 1976, when an ageing Gerald Ford lost a close contest and then ceded the
leadership of the Republican Party to Mr Reagan.

He said: "Win or lose, there is a ready made conservative candidate waiting in the wings. Sarah Palin is not the new Iain Duncan Smith, she is the new Ronald Reagan." On the accuracy of that judgment, perhaps, rests the future of the Republican
Party.