Tag Archives: campaign

Middle East Violence Spontaneous?

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

“I’ve come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutal interest and mutal respect and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition.” — President Barak Obama in Cairo, Egypt, June 4, 2009

In the last two weeks, three years after that speech, militant Islamists have been engaging in violent, lethal protests against the United States in Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, Tunisia, Indonesia, and Guinea. In Afghanistan, the U.S. is also facing violence from within, from Afghan police we have trained and work alongside.

Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, distanced her boss from the protests in a whirlwind weekend tour of Sunday talk shows. Continue reading →

Obama Is Not Working

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

All hell is breaking out in the Middle East and in North Africa. Israel is preparing to go to war with Iran. China and Japan are at the brink of war. Unemployment is above 8 percent. The Federal Reserve is forced to buy forty billion dollars of mortgage-backed securities a month because the Chairman is very worried that the economy will backslide into a deep recession. The debt numbers are only getting worse as the government grapples with adding a new entitlement to an already over-subscribed entitlement system.

The Obama Administration is failing on both the international and domestic stage.

And Mitt Romney is on the defensive!

How the hell does that happen? Continue reading →

Obama Nice Enough Guy

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Friday night I was on Anderson Cooper’s CNN program, AC360, with one of my favorite debate partners, Paul Begala. As neither Paul nor I am a foreign policy expert we talked about the domestic political aspects of the riots – and killings – in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

Cooper quoted from Friday morning’s Mullings (I don’t have the transcript but this is close): “Rich, you wrote in your column this morning that President Obama’s foreign policy is: Blame George W.”

What I wrote, in its entirety was: “Barack Obama’s foreign policy is the same as his domestic policy: It’s all George W’s fault.” Continue reading →

Are You Better Off…

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

As the Democratic Party gathers in Charlotte, North Carolina this week to re-nominate Barack Obama, the big question Republicans are asking Americans to answer this week is: Are you better off now than you were four years ago?

There is almost no metric that would allow a segment of the population to answer, “Yes.” But, before we get into the wrangling of the coming three days, let’s step back a bit.

Continue reading →

Campaigns Part II: News Media Save Thyself

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

New survey data released August 27, confirmed that more than 70 percent of Americans give the economy negative marks. Nearly the same number believes the country is seriously off track and the same number, 70 percent of Americans, believes the economy will be the dominant issue in how they vote.

The Washington Post headline over that story reflected a different reality: “While the rhetoric reflects other issues, economy still dominates race.” In other words, what the vast majority of Americans are most concerned about is not what the news media are covering. Continue reading →

Gillespie Deploys MacArthur Strategy

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Ed Gillespie is a modern day Douglas MacArthur. Let me explain.

On September 15, 1950, MacArthur led a force of mostly United States Marines in an amphibious assault at the largely undefended port of Inchon that was located far behind enemy lines. The North Koreans had closed in on American forces around the city of Pusan and the UN forces needed a break-out strategy. The strategy to go on offense helped to turn the tide of the war and the United Nations forces were able to drive the North Koreans back to their portion of the peninsula.

What MacArthur did was a lot like what Ed Gillespie has reportedly done with the Romney campaign. He decided that the best defense was a very good offense. Continue reading →

Gaming Poll Data: Biden a Bust

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

USA Today invested good money surveying people who are not going to vote in this year’s elections. Why? So they could find out how Barack Obama would do in November if everyone did vote.

According to this survey among the people who will not be voting, Obama beats Mitt Romney 43% to 14%. Yes, I know. There is a certain Alice-in-Wonderland aspect to all this, but let’s keep going.

The 800 person sample was not exactly an exact cross section of America.

For instance the sample contained 351 people who were registered to vote, and registered with one of the two major parties, but said there was no more than a 50/50 chance that they would participate. Of those 351 people, 242 (30%) said they were registered Democrats. 109 (14%) said they were Republicans. Continue reading →

Did Obama Ever Run a Lemonade Stand?

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

This presidential election is going to be about 1 thing and one thing only: ‘Do you believe that America is built on the notion that free people engaging in free enterprise is the BEST thing we can do as a nation…or that everything flows from the federal government?’

That is pretty much it, ladies and gentlemen. We have always had the debate in our national elections over more or less ‘control’ from a centralized authority in Washington starting with the debates in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. Continue reading →

Ryan Right Choice for Romney

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The selection of Rep. Paul Ryan to be Gov. Mitt Romney’s running mate was an excellent choice.

Nevertheless, the press corps happily bought into the Obama campaign’s early response that, as the Washington Post’s Dan Balz wrote: “There was no one on Romney’s short list of contenders they wanted to run against more than the chairman of the House Budget Committee.”

The great thing about that statement is: It would have worked no matter whom Romney had picked. In this age of everything anyone has ever said or even thought about anything being available instantaneously on-line, there is no such thing as a candidate that can’t be savaged in a 30 second ad by one SuperPAC or another. Continue reading →

Campaigns, Conventions, Summer Vacations

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

August in Your Nation’s Capital slows to a crawl. The Congress is gone – which is good news for the Republic. In normal years the President and Vice President head for some shore somewhere.

Well, George W. didn’t. He headed for Crawford, Texas which meant the national press corps got to hang out in Waco for weeks at a time. Compare and contrast that with going to Martha’s Vineyard for a Presidential vacation and you can see why political reporters tend to be Democrats. Continue reading →

Capitalism on Trial

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

The Obama campaign has decided to concentrate all of its fire on Mitt Romney’s years at Bain Capital. As a result, it manufactured story after story about decisions made by Romney and his partners that led to greater profitability at the company, but also the heartache that often comes with that profitability.

For the Obama campaign, this isn’t just about Bain Capital, which most acknowledge was a well-run and ethical company. This is a bigger argument about the nature of capitalism in society today. Continue reading →

Watergate Lessons Not Learned (Part I)

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

The leaks of classified information from the Obama Administration in recent weeks raise the specter of a Watergate scandal and lessons not learned.

There have been at least five different incidents in which it appears people in the White House or the Obama Administration, or people with their sanction, have leaked highly classified information to the media, presumably to make Obama look tough on terrorism.

Each incident has its own set of dubious circumstances. Each has its own disturbing story of compromised national security, the endangerment of professionals in clandestine services, the abuse and betrayal of our friends and allies, and the abuse of the White House and other government offices for partisan advantage.

The five latest incidents were: Continue reading →

Economy Ticking Time Bomb

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

From Bayeux, France, I am in Normandy for the annual D-Day commemoration on Wednesday. As part of this year’s festivities the World War II Foundation, headed by Tim Cook is presenting a statue of Major Dick Winters who was the central character in “Band of Brothers.”

More about that on Wednesday.

As I type this it is 5 AM Monday morning in France. That means it is 11PM Sunday night on the East Coast of the United States.

That is only useful because I am looking at the Asian markets as they open for business after Friday’s dreadful jobs numbers. As of this moment both the Japanese and Hong Kong market indices are down two percent. The European markets are set to open lower in that same range which means if the Dow follows suit it will lose nearly 250 more points today and end well below 12,000.

Other than my 401(k) being worth about 268.67(k) or minus one-third of its value, I am not much of a player in the stock market. However, like you and everyone else I have a monetary interest in the direction of the economy.

The direction appears to be decidedly down. Continue reading →

Women of Obamaland and Campaign Fakery

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Perhaps it was all part of a plan.

Still it seems oddly coincidental that just as revelations come out that the woman Barack Obama dated in one of his many autobiographies was actual not a woman but a composite of several women, the Obama campaign is unveiling Julia, another fake woman. Here is a tidbit from National Journal about Julia: “If the 2008 campaign had Joe the Plumber, 2012 might have “Julia,” a fictional woman created by the Obama campaign to show his strengths on women’s issues.

On Thursday, the campaign launched a webpage called “The Life of Julia,” tracking how the president’s policies have helped her throughout her lifetime and contrasting those to Mitt Romney’s policies. Starting at her childhood and ending at retirement, each slide shows an older Julia and a new policy. For example, at 31-years-old, a visibly pregnant Julia is at the doctor’s office. The caption reads, “Under President Obama: Julia decides to have a child. Throughout her pregnancy, she benefits from maternal checkups, prenatal care, and free screenings under health care reform.” As for Romney’s policies, the site says, “Health care reform would be repealed.” Continue reading →

Taxpayers Paying for Perpetual Campaigns

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

President Obama is expected to spend a record-breaking $1 billion on his re-election campaign. That’s a lot of money, but there’s more. There are super PACS and interest groups and party organizations, all of which will spend added millions on his re-election.

There’s another pot of money, however, that should be added to the total–the growing amount of tax dollars being used to fund trips and functions that are classified by the White House as “official government business” but are in reality, purely partisan campaign events.

Speaker John Boehner finally spoke up last week, calling the President’s whirlwind taxpayer funded tour of college campuses “pathetic” and “beneath the dignity” of the White House. The President went to colleges in three battleground states, at taxpayers’ expense, presumably to rally support for a problem that was pretty much solved before Air Force One left the ground.

The college town tour was just one of many diversions of taxpayer funds to the campaign. It’s been going on for nine months, and it’s getting worse. Continue reading →

Etch-a-Sketching a Campaign

BY B. JAY COOPER
Reprinted from apcoworldwide.com

One might say that the Etch-a-Sketch is the perfect metaphor for the Republican primary season. One day, Mitt Romney is featured on the screen; the next (shake-a, shake-a) Rick Santorum appears! Shake-a, shake-a, ba da bing – Mitt’s back!! Shake-a, shake-a…well, you get the idea.

Romney’s campaign guy, Eric Fernstrom, mucked up with his comment. It happens in a campaign. And in a campaign marred by a few of these kinds of comments (see: Mitt Romney, more than a few times, so far), Fernstrom’s comment becomes an even bigger “story” because the media’s “narrative” of Romney’s campaign is they say dumb things at dumb times and Mitt’s a chameleon. His slip up becomes a “gotcha” – well, if you buy the “narrative.” Continue reading →

Time to Hit The Road We’ve Traveled

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Does anyone else find it odd that the President’s campaign team is releasing its Hollywood biopic “The Road We’ve Traveled,” a full six months before the actual election and in the middle of a bloody and nasty Republican primary?

This is not some in-house production. Davis Guggenheim, who put together “Waiting for Superman”, and “Inconvenient Truth”, produced this for the President and perhaps the most popular actor in Hollywood, Tom Hanks, is the narrator.

This is the kind of film you show at the Convention. This is the kind of film you buy network time in the middle of High School football season. You don’t release this the day before St. Patrick’s Day, unless of course you are starting to panic about your crashing poll ratings.

Speaking of St. Patrick’s Day, the former White House Chief of Staff, Bill Daley, an Irishman if there ever was one, decided his first move after leaving the Obama Team was to join the Third Way, the “think tank” dedicated to making the Democratic Party less radically socialist. Good luck with that. Continue reading →

Super Pacs are Over-Rated

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

It is conventional wisdom that the rise of the so-called Super Pac is good for the Republican Party.

That is false.

The Super Pac is very good for some campaign consultants who want to ply their trade without having to consult directly with the pesky candidate. But they have been bad for the party as a whole.

Rick Santorum wouldn’t still be in the race if it weren’t for his Super Pac. Newt Gingrich wouldn’t still be in the race if it weren’t for his Super Pac. Those two Super Pacs have largely been funded by two rich guys who kind of like Rick and Newt.

The New York Times reported a couple of weeks ago that one rich guy gave money to the Rick Super Pac, the Newt Super Pac, and the Mitt Super Pac. Those Super Pac dollars were then used to beat the hell out of Rick, Newt and Mitt. So, in a sense, this one rich guy spent a million dollars so that Republicans could attack each other. Continue reading →

Trumped in Vegas

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Once again, Donald Trump trumped the rest of the world and made a grand opera out of an otherwise modestly interesting situation.

You may be aware that the Republican party of Nevada is holding its precinct caucuses tomorrow to choose delegates to the GOP national convention in Tampa in August.

There is not the frenzy that attended the Iowa caucuses because there have already been four election events in this GOP primary cycle even though Iowans not only got it wrong on election night, but lost the results of eight precincts and so when they got around to declaring the actual winner to be Rick Santorum (17 years after the event) the Iowa caucuses had no meaning. Continue reading →

Newt Must Trade Hope for a Miracle

BY RON BONJEAN
Reprinted from U.S. News

As the primary contest goes on to Nevada, one has to wonder what former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s campaign must do to stop former Gov. Mitt Romney’s momentum after his overwhelming victory in Florida. If the Gingrich campaign has an effective fundraising plan, solid organizational structures in Super Tuesday states, and reconfigures his message to appeal to voters, then he should remain in the race. However, if he simply chooses to remain in the race because he wants to needle the Romney campaign until the convention, most GOP voters will not have the stomach for it. Romney allies took Gingrich down in Iowa and Gingrich returned the favor in South Carolina. Both waged an extremely negative campaign in Florida and Romney won. Continue reading →