In the Wall Street Journal today, Democratic pollsters (in a pathetic preemmptive slap, the National Journal calls them “former Democratic pollsters”; they’re both Democrats right now, and they’re both pollsters right now; so like it or not guys, they’re “Democratic pollsters”) advocate that Barack Obama not run for reelection, and hand the Democratic Party’s nomination over to Hillary Clinton:

The Hillary Moment
President Obama can’t win by running a constructive campaign, and he won’t be able to govern if he does win a second term.

When Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson accepted the reality that they could not effectively govern the nation if they sought re-election to the White House, both men took the moral high ground and decided against running for a new term as president. President Obama is facing a similar reality—and he must reach the same conclusion.

He should abandon his candidacy for re-election in favor of a clear alternative, one capable not only of saving the Democratic Party, but more important, of governing effectively and in a way that preserves the most important of the president’s accomplishments. He should step aside for the one candidate who would become, by acclamation, the nominee of the Democratic Party: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Never before has there been such an obvious potential successor—one who has been a loyal and effective member of the president’s administration, who has the stature to take on the office, and who is the only leader capable of uniting the country around a bipartisan economic and foreign policy.

Point A — As Rush said today, it’s more than likely not going to happen. The Narcissist-in-chief needs to be flattered and buttered up to be convinced that he should not run with arguments like:

• “This is beneath your dignity, bro; you need to go on and lead the whole world to a better place like you have America (cough, cough).”
• “We can tell you’re bored and not happy in the White House. Who wouldn’t be, when there’s so many people keeping you from fundamentally transforming America as fast you’d like?”
• “(this one’s mine) Hey, you need to get back to community organizing until you come back like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro did.”

Instead, later in their column, Caddell and Schoen observe that “By going down the re-election road and into partisan mode, the president has effectively guaranteed that the remainder of his term will be marred by the resentment and division that have eroded our national identity, common purpose, and most of all, our economic strength.” Does anyone think Barack Obama gives a damn about that, except to consider each item a good thing? Shoot, if that’s what will come from a second term, Obama is saying, “Sign me up!”

Point B — Some of us (that would include me) remember how radical (Black Panthers’ defense) and deceitful (pretending not to ever have known about Monica Lewinsky until the rest of us did) Hillary Clinton really is, and are not convinced that she would govern any differently from Obama. She might conceivably be more practical like her husband was at times, but when he was President she was seen as the one who was frustrated the most when nationalized health care failed (it was Hillary’s baby, after all) and was the most determined to pursue dirty opposition tactics like purloining opponents’ FBI files, discrediting Clinton’s female accusers, and the like.

Point C — In the highly likely event that Obama doesn’t handle withdrawing and staying out of the way well, as both LBJ and Truman did, he could end up discouraging his die-hard supporters from going over to Mrs. Clinton.

Point D — Team Obama will quickly remind everyone that in both previous instances where an incumbent Dem chose not to run, a Republican won the presidency (Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 over Adlai Stevenson, and Richard Nixon over Hubert Humphrey in 1968). In the latter case, Humphrey discouraged leftists who had wanted Gene McCarthy, the assassinated Bobby Kennedy, or George McGovern to get the nomination by refusing to say that he’d withdraw immediately from Vietnam. Hillary could similarly discourage the loony-left base if she doesn’t adopt every single one of Obama’s unfinished 2008 campaign planks, even the ones he’s flipped on (like Gitmo).

Unfortunately, I think Caddell and Schoen are critically wrong in the second part of their op-ed’s subhead above. If Obama wins a second term, he’ll govern by Executive Order, regulatory mandate, and other authoritarian means, and dare the opposition to stop him. Sadly, I wouldn’t bet on the opposition having the nerve to do what it must if that happens.

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UPDATE: Now that Rush has his post up, here are excerpts —

Here’s a pull quote from the piece. “If President Obama is not willing –” listen to this, now. “If President Obama is not willing to seize the moral high ground and step aside, then the two Democratic leaders in Congress, Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, must urge the president not to seek re-election — for the good of the party and most of all for the good of the country. And they must present the only clear alternative — Hillary Clinton.”

Now, the Schoen-Caddell plan comes down to putting the country above personal ambition. For that reason we know that this will fail.

… But if you had flattered him, if you had told him that there are greater things, that the reason things are going the way they are is because he’s just not challenged, this is just too small, that you can tell he’s bored, you can tell he’s not interested. We all can see that he and Michelle don’t like the White House. They don’t like living there. They would rather be anywhere else. Running this country is so uninteresting to him, so beneath his stature, so beneath his skill set, so beneath his intellect. The world is crying for a leader now, not just America, the world is crying for a leader, a leader that the United States will listen to. Then maybe you guys coulda gotten him to quit.

It’s here.

It will go up here at BizzyBlog on Wednesday (link won’t work until then) after the blackout expires.

Bottom line, IMO: Right-to-work (described here) is a fabulous idea. Getting it on the ballot — in 2013 — would be marvelous.

Key stats from the column, based on a review of the past decade’s GDP growth:

• Nine of the top 12 GDP-performing states are right-to-work. (nine of 11, if you exclude DC, whose growth is predominantly driven by the federal government and not private-sector commerce.
• The four worst (including Ohio, which came in second-worst and actually slightly shrunk during the decade)) aren’t.
• Weighted-average GDP growth in the 22 right-to-work states was 21.7%; in the rest, it was 13.6%.

Of course I’m going to suggest that everyone read the whole thing.

I really thought that items related to the Obama-endorsed (proof here, here, here, and here) Occupy movement would mellow out over the weekend, but there are enough cleanup items (pun intended) to last at least through Wednesday.

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At the Smoking Gun (“‘Occupy’ Protester Busted For Stealing Neighbor’s Furniture For Florida Encampment”) — “(Jeffrey) Scott was nabbed shortly after victim Ned English called police to report the theft of a couch, a recliner, four wicker chairs, and four couch cushions from his home.”

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PR Daily, November 18 (HT Instapundit) — “… the movement blew it by having no overriding purpose, stated goals, or visible leadership, he says, and it is increasingly perceived as a bunch of publicity-hungry complainers intent on disrupting others who are making a living.” That’s because it is.

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John at Verum Serum — “Conservative Ezra Levant took an infrared camera down to Occupy Toronto and discovered nearly all the tents are empty.”

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Rex Murphy at the National Post — “They are not a cadre speaking up for the vast proportion of the population against the tyranny or greed of an imagined “1%.” Judging from the speakers I have seen and heard, either on news broadcasts or the multiple sites offering live-broadcast or YouTube coverage, the people in the various Occupy camps represent a petty sub-sample of the hard left; i.e., a range of angry students, homeless and their advocates, and – not insignificantly – some just outright strange people.”

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At BigGovernment.com (HT OWS Exposed) — “New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg suggested Friday that unions took over the Occupy Wall Street protest yesterday (for Thursday’s Shut Down Wall Street attempt).” Unions have been funding OWS in a major way almost from the get-go.

Rules are here. Possible comment fodder may follow later. Other topics are also fair game.

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From Eau Claire, Wisconsin:

Published: November 17

A motorist who had a heart attack but was kept alive by a stranger whom just minutes earlier he had stopped to help along a Wisconsin interstate has had a tearful reunion with that woman and the first responders who saved his life.

Victor Giesbrecht, 61, expressed his gratitude Wednesday to Sara Berg, the Eau Claire woman who performed CPR on him just a few miles further along the Interstate 94 from where he had helped her to change a tire.

“He said ‘thank you’ and we hugged, then we both started crying,” Berg told the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram. First responders also attended the reunion at Giesbrecht’s room at Mayo Clinic Health System in Eau Claire. Giesbrecht hoped to be released Thursday.

Giesbrecht, of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and his wife, Ann, were driving to Indiana Nov. 5 when they saw Berg, 40, and her cousin, Lisa Meier, stopped on the side of the interstate with a flat tire. Giesbrecht pulled over, retrieved a jack from his pickup and helped change the flat.

Minutes after driving away, Giesbrecht suffered a heart attack and lost consciousness. His wife brought their pickup to a stop and called 911. Then along came the women whom Giesbrecht had just helped. When Berg, a certified nursing assistant, discovered that Giesbrecht wasn’t breathing, she started CPR. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

The dictionary definition of “stimulate” relevant to a nation’s economy is “to rouse to action or effort.”

We still have journalists who gullibly relay the notion that extending unemployment benefits and increasing entitlement programs will “rouse” the economy “to action of effort,” despite almost three years of evidence that such is not the case. One of them is Andrew Taylor, a writer for the Associated Press, who, in his unprofessionally titled (“Deficit deal failure would pose crummy choice”) and painfully long writeup about the supercommittee’s lack of action or effort in Washington, wrote the following:

(more…)

In their deeply deceptive Friday morning story (“Deep spending cuts pose a new threat to US economy”) about how the bicameral bipartisan supercommittee is supposedly going to hurt the economy with whatever results from its handiwork, Christopher Rugaber and Daniel Wagner of the Associated Press, aka The Administration’s Press, “somehow” forgot to include one “little” detail, and deferred another until very late in their report.

The omission, which is that the “cuts” under consideration are really reductions in projected spending increases in future years, is sadly typical. The fact is the $1.2 trillion in “savings” the supercommittee hopes to engineer will only slightly reduce the rate of spending growth. The deferral is that the pair waited until Paragraph 18 to tell readers, and even then only incompletely, that the “deep cuts” would be spread over nine years, thereby amounting to roughly 3% of the $40.3 trillion if projected 2013-2021 spending (Page XI here). The AP pair never explains how “cuts” which wouldn’t kick in until the October 1, 2012 beginning of fiscal 2013 and which are (as they have almost always been) heavily skewed towards later years would affect the current economy. Excerpts from the pair’s report follow (bolds are mine):

(more…)

Rules are here. Possible comment fodder may follow later. Other topics are also fair game.

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From Baltimore:

Nov 15, 2011 / 06:15 pm

Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl announced today that an Anglican ordinariate in the United States will be canonically erected on Jan. 1, 2012, the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God.

“I remain convinced this ordinariate will be a true expression of the Catholic Church,” said Cardinal Wuerl, who made the announcement Nov. 15 at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ fall general assembly in Baltimore.

Cardinal Wuerl is serving as the Vatican’s delegate for establishing a U.S. Anglican ordinariate.

He explained that he recently received a letter from Cardinal William Joseph Levada, head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, saying that Pope Benedict has approved the erection of a U.S. ordinariate.

Ordinariates are similar to dioceses but typically national in scope. Pope Benedict authorized the creation of ordinariates for Anglican communities seeking to enter the Catholic Church in his 2009 apostolic constitution, “Anglicanorum coetibus.”

They will allow entire communities to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church while retaining elements of their Anglican heritage and liturgical practices.

Cardinal Wuerl said that he anticipates approximately 2,000 people joining the American ordinariate when it is established in January.

He explained that two Anglican communities – one in the Diocese of Fort Worth and the other in the Archdiocese of Washington – have already come into full communion with the Catholic Church in anticipation of the new ordinariate being created.

In addition, he said, 67 dossiers from Anglican clergy seeking ordination have been sent to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome.

So far, 35 have received initial approval, meaning that they an now move on to the second stage of the process, which includes a criminal background check, psychological evaluation and vote of support from the local Catholic bishop, as well as from the local Anglican ecclesiastic authority, if possible.

Cardinal Wuerl also announced that the Holy See has approved a catechesis program for Anglican congregations that wish to join the ordinariate.

Go here for the rest of the story.

… for how stupid this is (HT Instapundit):

If anyone out there can top this, I’m not sure I want to hear about it.

Oops, he supposedly did it again. Herman Cain, the GOP presidential candidate who has experience as a rocket scientist on his resume, made another allegedly “stupid” remark. Why, if you buy the press’s accounts of his statements, it’s hard to believe the guy can dress himself in the morning without hanging his pants over his head and putting his socks on his hands.

Here’s what Cain said that has the ninnies at ThinkProgress aka ThinkRegress (whom I won’t link) and the Politico all lathered up — When Cain recounted how he wouldn’t answer a reporter’s non-specific question about Libya, he responded that he needed to know which aspect of President Obama’s current “policy” (there is one?) he should address: “Do I agree with siding with the opposition? Do I agree with saying that Qadhafi should go? Do I agree that they now have a country where you’ve got Taliban and Al Qaeda that’s going to be part of the government? … Do I agree with not knowing the government was going to — which part was he asking me about? I was trying to get him to be specific and he wouldn’t be specific.” Well, it turns out, in an update at Politico which ThinkRegress isn’t posting, lest it disturb its meme of constant condescension, that a Cain spokesman identified an important Libyan official with Taliban connections lickety-split:

UPDATE: In an email, Cain spokesman J.D. Gordon points to Libyan military commander Abdel Hakim Belhadj as a sometime Taliban ally now prominent in the Libyan transitional government. Gordon cites a Reuters article from Nov. 11, profiling Belhadj’s role in Libya and noting that “after fighting with the Afghan Taliban [he] was captured and sent to Libya in 2004, where he was jailed until last year.”

Gordon referred to Belhadj as a “former Taliban-linked fighter in Afghanistan now leading the militia in Tripoli.” That’s plainly not the same thing as having “Taliban … that’s going to be part of the government,” as Cain said, but it’s a fair clarification of Cain’s point.

In response to the bolded clause: Oh really? A guy who has been a sometime Taliban ally is “now prominent in the Libyan transitional government,” but he’s automatically not going to be part of the government when the government isn’t transitional any more? Is the Taliban only going to be “part of the government” if its mullah, lead imam, or ayatollah sits on a throne?

There’s more to this, which casts doubt on ThinkRegress’s smug, everybody-knows assertion that “Of course, the Taliban exists in Afghanistan and Pakistan, not Libya,” specifically this from the UK Telegraph in March, which I found in roughly three minutes of brutally exhaustive searching:

Hakim Alsady was named in the colonel’s (Gaddafi’s) rambling, paranoid speech on Thursday as one of the al-Qaeda men he blamed for the uprising. Mr Alsady told The Sunday Telegraph his days fighting alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan are long over and he has moderated his political views. Since he returned to Libya in 2002 under an amnesty, Mr Alsady has lived quietly as a teacher.

He said he was surprised, and amused, to be singled out by Colonel Gaddafi for causing the revolution.
“I want democracy as everyone else does, not an Islamic state,” he said. “You cannot believe this crazy man. We have to get rid of him.”

We all know that Mr. Alsady has to be telling the truth about his “moderated” political views and noninvolvement with the Taliban. “Former” terrorists and terrorist sympathizers neeeeeever lie. (/sarc)

And though Gaddafi was goofy, it’s simply amazing how the former Libyan dictator, out of the millions of people in the country, “somehow” fingered Alsady of all people as being involved in the uprising. Also note that Alsady would appear to have been or to still be associated with both Al Qaeda and the Taliban, so Cain’s naming of both groups in the same sentence is clearly not out of line. Alsady is more than likely far from the only person in post-overthrow Libya with current and/or past connections to both groups.

As far as I’m concerned, perhaps Cain should have mentioned the Taliban after Al Qaeda (however, in order of historical appearance on the world scene, the Taliban, whose origins go back to the mid-1980s, came before Al Qaeda, which was founded “sometime between August 1988 and late 1989″). But the Herminator turns out to be demonstrating more knowledge of what’s going on in Libya than the people who supposedly have immersed themselves in the news of the world for years, but who still think they have the presumptive right to ridicule what has turned out to be Cain’s fundamentally correct characterization of the situation.

Cain’s fundamental correctness is of course unimportant to the press, whose mission appears to be to make Cain look like a buffoon at any cost — even the truth. This is of course consistent with a media pattern of discrediting the intelligence of Republican presidential candidates and presidents going back at least 60 years. The New York Times in the 1950s was telling readers Dwight Eisenhower, who “only” orchestrated D-Day and commanded the Allies to victory in World War II, wasn’t really that bright either.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Rules are here. Possible comment fodder may follow later. Other topics are also fair game.

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