DISMAY, HORROR
“Buyer’s remorse? Not me,” Camille Paglia writes at www.salon.com.
“At the North American summit in Guadalajara [in Mexico] this week, President Obama resumed the role he is best at - representing the U.S. with dignity and authority abroad. This is why I, for one, voted for Obama and continue to support him. The damage done to U.S. prestige by the feckless, buffoonish George W. Bush will take years to repair. Obama has barely begun the crucial mission that he was elected to do,” Miss Paglia said.
“Having said that, I must confess my dismay bordering on horror at the amateurism of the White House apparatus for domestic policy. When will heads start to roll? I was glad to see the White House counsel booted, as well as Michelle Obama’s chief of staff, and hope it’s a harbinger of things to come. Except for that wily fox, David Axelrod, who could charm gold threads out of moonbeams, Obama seems to be surrounded by juvenile tinhorns, bumbling mediocrities and crass bully boys.
“Case in point: the administration’s grotesque mishandling of health care reform, one of the most vital issues facing the nation. Ever since Hillary Clinton’s megalomaniacal annihilation of our last best chance at reform in 1993 (all of which was suppressed by the mainstream media when she was running for president), Democrats have been longing for that happy day when this issue would once again be front and center.
“But who would have thought that the sober, deliberative Barack Obama would have nothing to propose but vague and slippery promises - or that he would so easily cede the leadership clout of the executive branch to a chaotic, rapacious, solipsistic Congress? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom I used to admire for her smooth aplomb under pressure, has clearly gone off the deep end with her bizarre rants about legitimate town-hall protests by American citizens. She is doing grievous damage to the party and should immediately step down.”
AIR CONGRESS
“Congressional scandals form a pattern,” the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund writes at www.opinionjournal.com.
“First, there is the revelation that some members have acted in a high-handed, spendthrift or unethical manner. Then public anger flares, and Congress responds by belatedly tamping down the controversy.
“Most of the time this is the end of it. But every once in a while the scandal continues to burn and consumes a few members. That’s what happened in 1994 when the House Bank and Post Office scandals helped fuel the Republican takeover of Congress, and in 2006 when the Jack Abramoff and earmark scandals helped end GOP control,” Mr. Fund said.
“House leaders hope that dropping plans to spend $550 million on elite Gulfstream jets to fly members around the globe will dissipate public ire. I’m not so sure. Voters are strapped by the weak economy and angry about how health care reform is being rushed through Congress. More revelations about congressional travel are coming.”
PITIFUL GIANTS
“They own the bully pulpit. They enjoy a mandate. They can move the votes. They dictate the debate. They write the legislation. They monopolize the coverage,” Denver Post columnist David Harsanyi writes.
“When it comes to politics, Democrats are U.S. Steel, Ma Bell and Google all rolled into one. And yet because of a mystifying cosmic event, they are also victims,” Mr. Harsanyi said.
“In a recent editorial in USA Today, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and sidekick Steny Hoyer grumbled about how reactionaries are shutting down the voices of the enlightenment on health care. They accused town hall insurrectionists of being ’afraid not just of differing views - but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American.’
“On one point, at least, Pelosi is correct: Many protesters are terrified of fact. Because the fact is every iteration of health care ’reform’ in Washington is intended to lead us to a single-payer system, which would not only wreck innovation and competition but also inject bean-counting bureaucrats into our health care decisions, from zygote to cremation.
“But the notion that grass-roots opponents have the capacity - even by acting boorishly at a smattering of town hall meetings (rudeness, last anyone checked, still is protected by the First Amendment) - to ’drown out’ the voices of Washington is what our president might call silly.”
SESTAK’S QUEST
“On paper, perhaps, Rep. Joe Sestak seems to be on a quixotic mission - to unseat Arlen Specter, a 30-year incumbent senator who is probably the most successful politician in Pennsylvania history,” Sean Scully writes at www.time.com.
“And he’s got to do it all in nine months with less money than Specter, little name recognition outside his district in the Philadelphia suburbs and the near unanimous disapproval of the state’s powerful Democratic establishment,” Mr. Scully said.
“Is he crazy?
“Surprisingly, many of the state’s veteran political observers and activists say no. ’It’s going to require an insurgency campaign, kind of a storming the gates with pitchforks and torches kind of campaign,’ says strategist Mark Nevins, who advised Hillary Clinton in her successful primary campaign in Pennsylvania last year. ’That is difficult to run but can be very effective in this kind of environment.’
“Most important, the campaign must be keyed to Specter’s unexpected defection from the Republican Party last spring. On April 28, he announced he was switching parties after admitting he would lose the GOP primary to conservative challenger Pat Toomey. Specter’s blunt and clinical explanation for why he switched did little to endear him to many of the Democratic partisans who will vote in the May 18 primary election. ’He lost his first and best opportunity to really make people believe that it was a fundamental shift in his ideology,’ Nevins says. ’Instead he made it sound opportunistic.’ ”
FEAR AND PANIC
“The Democrats are understandably stunned” by protests against a government health care takeover, Jennifer Rubin writes in a blog at www.commentarymagazine.com.
“They and those sympathetic to them do control everything - the White House, Congress, the mainstream media, the popular culture, and elite education. And they still - despite all that power - cant get the public to pipe down and go along quietly with their planned takeover of health care. What is wrong with everyone? You can sense the anger, the resentment. And the panic.”
Greg Pierce can be reached at 202/636-3285 or gpierce @washingtontimes.com.
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