Um, define “undermine” (UPDATED: this qualifies)

As of 1:30 PM this afteroon (EDT), confusion reigns across the rightosphereon just what House Minority Leader John Boehner and his number two (Eric Cantor, the Congressman from a district neighboring mine) had in mind when they put their names to two discharge petitions (one from Steve King, the other from Wally Herger) for bills purporting to repeal Democare.

To hear Eric Erickson (Red State) tell it, the two-bills-is-better-than-one move was a clever bait and switch designed to prevent repeal, rather than enhance its prospects:

Notice that Cantor and Boehner were absolutely silent on Rep. King’s efforts until they had Wally Herger’s discharge petition ready to go. Why? Because they want to bully Republican House members into signing the Herger petition and undercut the repeal effort with a “replace and replace with lame legislation” effort. In effect, this undercuts a unified repeal effort and muddies the waters.

Now, yours truly has been leery of Messrs. Boehner and Cantor ever since they rolled over for TARP two years ago.  Additionally, the muddy-the-water-with-multiple-bills move is hardly unprecedented or unbelievable.  Finally, Herger’s “replacement” could very well be as weak as Erickson says it is.

There is, however, one problem, namely coming straight from the Hill article to which Erickson himself links:

King’s petition would repeal parts of the healthcare reform law that originated in the Senate, while Herger’s petition would repeal all of the healthcare law and the reconciliation bill.

Wouldn’t that make Herger’s bill closer to genuine repeal?

I don’t ask that rhetorically.  I’d really like to know.  My eyes say yes, but a blogger I trust says no.  They can’t both be right.

Cross-posted to BD

UPDATE: Ramesh Ponnuru weighs in on the subject in The Corner.  He doesn’t question motives, but he argues – convincingly – that Herger’s replacement bill gets in the way of King’s repeal bill.  Just as importantly, he explains why King’s bill doesn’t repeal the reconciliation side-car (it was introduced before the sidecar passed).  I’m not ready to say Cantor and Boehner deliberately damaged King’s petition, but I now agree that Herger’s bill distracts.

Have Turkish voters had enough of the AKP?

In all of the outrage, counter-outrage, and the rest of the discussion surrounding the “Gaza flotilla,” one group has gone largely unnoticed – the Turkish electorate.

It has become conventional wisdom that the rise of the Justice and Development Party in Turkey (AKP) has been an inevitable result of Turkey’s transition from a military-dominated secular republic to a more democratic one, and as such, the AKP has carte blanche from the Turkish people to move in a more Islamist and anti-Western direction.

There’s only one problem: the voters have’t weighed in yet, and if recent polls are any indication, they are not happy.  In order to understand why, we have to go back to how the AKP was elected in the first place.

The 2002 elections in Turkey (AKP’s first win) were held amidst a revulsion against elite corruption.  Of the five parties who held seats in Parliament (the smallest had 85 seats), none elected a single MP.  Under Turkish election rules, a party must win at least 10% of the vote to get seats, which are than allocated basically under proportional representation.  Only two parties passed the threshhold in 2002 – the AKP and the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the party of secularist founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.  Thus, the AKP was nearly two-thirds of the seats despite scoring less than 35% of the vote.  Given the freakish nature of the election, most assumed it was a one-off.

However, the AKP, apparently well aware of its precarious position, played their cards close to the vest in government.  Any movement away from secularism was portrayed as a move toward religious freedom, not the imposition of Wahabbist-like Islam.  While the Turkish parliament refused to allow the American military to launch the liberation of Iraq from Turkey (whether due to incompetence or design, the AKP MPs split on the measure, allowing the CHP to defeat it), the use of airspace was OKed.  In 2007, the AKP got the mandate it wanted, scoring an impressive 47% of the vote.  While its majority in MPs was reduced (the nationalist MHP became the third party to get more than 10%), the AKP also had far more political capital – which it has since used to move away from the West (culminating, so far, in the Gaza flotilla) and to crack down heavily on the Turkish military.

However, while all this was going on, the CHP changed leaders, picking corruption battler Kemal Kilicdaroglu to lead them.  Almost immediately after that decision, the CHP became more competitive.  Three polls taken after the change showed that the CHP and MHP would have enough support to block the AKP from power (Angus Reid, Fresno Bee, and Zalman); Sonar Arastirma (cited by Angus) even had the CHP in the lead.

Now, the next election isn’t for a year, which is several lifetimes in politics.  Moreover, while the CHP is a secular, Western-oriented party, it is also a left-wing one which led the opposition to the liberation of Iraq.  It is clear however that, for now, the new direction in which Turkey is headed does not yet have the support of the people in whose name it has been taken, and come this time next year, another election may lead to a swift reversal.

Cross-posted to BD

Thank you, Joe Biden

My search for a new tagline has ended (LA Times).

Cross-posted to VV

Why I cannot join the optimists on the Petraeus appointment

I do believe President Obama should have accepted General McChrystal’s resignation, and I agree with the near universal assessment on the right that there can be no better replacement than General David Petraeus.  However, that does not mean I am more confident about the fate of Afghanistan today than I was yesterday.  The reason is simple: President Obama.

Amidst the praise for General Petraeus – which he certainly earned from his performance in Iraq – we have almost entirely forgotten the importance of the civilian who appointed him, as if having Petraeus as the military commander makes the president a better Commander-in-Chief.  It doesn’t.

Lest we forget, when Petraeus was commander in the Iraq theatre, then-President Bush had his back every step of the way, and he set the tone for everyone else in his Administration: the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, other civilian appointees, etc.  Even Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who couldn’t have agreed with the general every second of every day, kept his contentions (and attempts to resolve them) private.

Contrast that with Obama’s treatment of McChrystal, who was not only appointed by Obama but was on the president’s side politically (no one knows to this day what Petraeus’ political affiliations are): civilians from Vice President Biden on down could and did brief against the general’s strategy – even though it was supposed to be the president’s, too.

Nearly everyone assumes Obama et al will avoid that sort of thing with Petraeus.

I have my doubts.

The only thing we knew about President Bush’s view on the WBK War was that he wanted it won.  The only thing we knew about President Obama’s view on the WBK War is that he wants it over.  That’s not the same thing, as I fear Petraeus is soon to discover.

Consider the President’s own words (SF Headlines Examiner):

So make no mistake:  We have a clear goal.  We are going to break the Taliban’s momentum.  We are going to build Afghan capacity.  We are going to relentlessly apply pressure on al Qaeda and its leadership, strengthening the ability of both Afghanistan and Pakistan to do the same.

Notice what’s missing?  Any references to defeating the Taliban?  Any references to defeating al Qaeda?  Any reference to victory?  No to all three.

In short, the president has picked the right general, but for the wrong objectives.  He (the president) still wants merely to end the war, not to win it.  That’s a flaw no general can fix, not even David Petraeus.

Sorry, Riley

Cross-posted to VV

Krystal, Krystal, Krystal

Poor Krystal Ball; she’s thoroughly disoriented after getting a painful smackdown from the Free Lance-Star.  Her response to stumbling into the hole she dug for herself was . . . to keep digging.

First, she rips Wittman for being “ineffective” and a “follower.”  Worse, to Krytsal: “He has yet to show any independence from his party.”

Huh?

Was Krystal in some parallel universe two years ago, when Wittman broke with President Bush, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, and Eric Cantor to vote against TARP?

Apparently not, because in her same rambling wreck of a statement, she notes that “Big banks and Washington got us into this mess,” without noticing that Wittman voted against both when he opposed TARP.

Then again, elsewhere on her site, she laments that the courts reduced the broad reach of the EPA, never mind the agency’s record of fudging data right here in our district.

So Krystal is running for Congress knowing neither what Wittman has done in Washington nor what the government has done to her own would-be constituents.

At least she’s consistently ignorant.

Cross-posted to VV

A good night in South Carolina

Gresham Barrett went down in flames to Nikki Haley (he lost by nearly 2-1).

Equally good news came from the 4th Disrict Congressional Primary where Bob Inglis (another TARP backer) was waxed by Trey Gowdy (the latter winning with over 70% of the primary vote).

The Palmetto GOP did well.

Cross-posted to VV

A perfect metaphor

Obsession over stauts screwing up the machinery . . .

A label for an unfinished project that’s almost entirely poltential . . .

A needless waste of taxpayer money . . .

Is anyone really surprised?

Cross-posted to VV

Doesn’t anyone just resign anymore?

So General McChrystal has chosen to take his disagreement with the Administration public – very public, in Rolling Stone, of all places (Wall Street Journal via Jim Geraghty).

Among other things, the general informs us that he really doesn’t like Vice President Biden, is suspicious of the diplomats sent to “help” him, and is disappointed in the president.

Now, from a policy perspective, I’m generally with McChrystal here (except for Hamid Karzai, who I don’t trust at all).  On the flip side, this is an interview a general in the field simply cannot do (as Doug M points out).

The more I think about this, the more one conclusion becomes clear: McChrystal is not getting the support from Washington that he needs (and, in my view, deserves); he’s had enough; and he’s essentially asking to be fired.

That last part’s the pity here.  There was a time when someone in the general’s position would have resigned, and then explained why.  I cannot understand why McChrystal chose not to do that.  It would have freed him to speak his mind, made a much bigger splash than even this has, and would have shown him to be a decent man who was simply pushed too far.

Instead, for whatever reason, he pushed back.

I suspect that when the general becomes a private citizen (and like Doug, I see that coming sooner rather than later), I will end up on his side during the painfully inevitable “who lost Afghanistan?” argument.  That said, McChrystal’s method of joining the debate will make things harder for us.  I only wish he’d considered that, and offered his resignation instead of (or at least along with) the interview.

Cross-posted to VV

Krystal’s Ball a little cloudy

I have to hand it to Krystal Ball, nominee for the Democrats running against my Congressman (Rob Wittman). It takes hard work to upset the Free Lance-Star as much as she did.

The FLS has an annoying habit of leaning ever so slightly right-of-center while ripping any local Republican within their field of vision (as a Republican nominee for Spotsylvania Board of Supervisors, I can speak from personal experience). So, one has to ask what led the editors of the Rappahannock River’s MSM wannabe to come to Wittman’s defense so strongly.

It turned out to be the nonsense Ball put on her first mailer.

First off, the editors are unhappy that ball put words in their mouths:

In her first political mailer of the race, Ms. Ball, a Democrat, didn’t resort to greasy deception–she started out that way. For one thing, the piece cites a Free Lance-Star link beneath the words “Wittman won’t go against the Republican establishment even when voters beg him to be aggressive in what’s going on in Washington.” Neither the words nor the sentiment ever surfaced in a Free Lance-Star editorial–surely a natural inference–nor does the cited link contain that verbiage–though an average reader would conclude that the mailer’s words are a direct quote.

The citation is of a news story chiefly about Mr. Wittman’s primary race, and reflects a view voiced by a supporter of Yosemite Sam acolyte Susan Crabill (sic), whom Mr. Wittman beat about 4-to-1.

In other words, Ball is attributing to the paper’s writers/editors a line actually said by a Crabillite (not that the paper did any favors by getting Cathy Crabill’s name wrong). Oops.

More to the point, the actual line is thoroughly off-base no matter who said it. In fact, in the biggest vote of his career, Rob Wittman opposed his party leaders in Congress – including neighbor Eric Cantor – and even opposed his own party’s President (George W. Bush) to vote against TARP (i.e., the bank bailout).

As none other that the editors of the FLS actually said: “Rob Wittman, meanwhile, should be every Washington-weary American’s cup of tea.”

What else upset that FLS crew? In their own words . . .

Ms. Ball’s mailbox gift to 1st District households also charges, “Wittman was ranked last in effectiveness of all Congressmen from Virginia.” Indeed, Mr. Wittman’s sole “power ranking” by KnowLegis, a lobbying information firm, places Mr. Wittman a pitiable 432nd among 435 House members for the year 2007. But, apparently to hold down typesetting fees, the mailer omits the crucial KnowLegis notations: “Too few terms or years in office in Congress to have significant clout” and “Member has reduced power due to Freshman status.”

That’s putting it mildly. Mr. Wittman joined Congress on Dec. 13, 2007–four days before it adjourned for the holidays. Of course he had no clout: The congressional year expired almost as soon as he found his office bathroom! Mr. Wittman was a late arriver because he had to win a special election following the tragic death of Rep. Jo Ann Davis from breast cancer. Upon such circumstances does Krystal Ball build her tower of legerdemain.

The editors next line is as follows:

Ms. Ball, in fact, has all but disqualified herself from this race. Whatever Washington needs, we’re pretty sure it’s not more clever deception, not more half- and quarter-truths, not more contempt for common decency.

Ouch!

How disastrous was Ball’s mailer? Put aside whatever biases you may have – one way or the other – and look at it this way: Ball’s mailer led to a perfect negative ad against her for which the Wittman campaign paid no money, exerted no energy, and therefore risks no blowback.

A number of people were initially impressed with Krystal Ball’s ability to raise money, but if she keeps shooting herself in the foot like this . . .

Cross-posted to BD

Getting the band back together

Mike Huckabee is dropping hints that he’ll be running for President in 2012.

You know what that means.

Cross-posted to VV